The ability to make contact with the outside world, in virtually any circumstance, is one of the benefits of amateur (ham) radio.
Members of the Princeton Amateur Radio Club brought that point home Saturday and Sunday, when they set up their equipment at the City-County Park to participate in American Radio Relay League (ARRL) Field Day activities.
The field day included a contest element, where local clubs received points for successfully making contacts with other amateur radio stations across the country, and internationally.
“I heard somebody in Denmark on there a while ago,” club member Richard Blackburn said Saturday afternoon.
A handful of ham operators from the area camped under tents near the park’s front entrance, with fans going full-blast against a three-digit heat index.
The station was set up at about noon Saturday and scheduled to be operational into Sunday morning.
The goal of the event, the climax of the ARRL-sponsored Amateur Radio Week, was to showcase the versatility and portability of an amateur radio system.
“The main thing to do is testing your emergency capabilities,” said Mike Taylor, president of the local club.
The county’s ham operators proved valuable in the immediate aftermath of January’s ice storm, when most other forms of communication were silenced.
“If there wasn’t a cell phone, as there wasn’t then, if there wasn’t a telephone, or any other way, there’s always ham radio,” Taylor said.
In addition to the radio equipment set up at the camp site, the club also displayed COM-1, a former county ambulance retrofitted with radio equipment for use as a mobile communications station.
Ham operators man COM-1 at the discretion of county emergency management officials.
More than 30,000 amateur radio operators across the country were anticipated to participate in this year’s Field Day.
For more information on local amateur radio activities, visit the local club’s Web site at www.w4kbl.org.
