Members of The Villages Amateur Radio Club will be participating in the national Amateur Radio Field Day exercise later this month.
The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held June 22-23 at the Sumter County Annex, located at the corner of Morse Boulevard and County Road 466.
For more than 100 years, amateur radio – sometimes called ham radio – has allowed people from all walks of life to experiment with electronics and communication techniques, as well as provide a free public service to their communities during a disaster – all without needing phones, the internet or even the power grid.
Since 1933, ham radio operators across North America have established temporary ham radio stations in public locations during Field Day to showcase the science and skill of amateur radio. The popular event, which will include more than 40,000 people from thousands of locations in North America, provides an opportunity for operators to showcase ham radio’s ability to work reliably under any conditions from almost any location and create an independent communications network.
This year, members of The Villages Amateur Radio Club will erect antennas behind the Annex and will set up multiple amateur radio stations inside the Sumter County Emergency Services trailer, which is generously provided for the club’s use on Field Day. The stations will operate on emergency power using the trailer’s generator.
At 2 p.m. on Saturday, June 22, thousands of amateur radio clubs and groups will begin making contact with each other, exchanging call signs, locations and other information. Participating stations will continue to make contacts for 24 hours to demonstrate the ability of their emergency stations to provide reliable communications in the event of an emergency.
At the end of the 24-hour period, the event will conclude and members of The Villages Amateur Radio Club will dismantle the station and the antennas, pack them up and take them home to await a real emergency or next year’s Field Day.
For more information, contact Mike Regan, KM4ZTE, at (816) 678-5086 or mikeeregan@yahoo.com.
