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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Having a Field Day

Ely “hams” participate in national radio event

Keith Vandervort
Posted 6/29/17

ELY – Using a mobile fish house parked at the Pioneer Mine, members of the Vermilion Range Amateur Radio Club crammed into their makeshift radio shack last weekend to take part in the national …

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Having a Field Day

Ely “hams” participate in national radio event

Posted

ELY – Using a mobile fish house parked at the Pioneer Mine, members of the Vermilion Range Amateur Radio Club crammed into their makeshift radio shack last weekend to take part in the national Amateur Radio Field Day.

A tent set up nearby acted as a demonstration site for Morse code sending and a public relations booth as the club members joined thousands of fellow “hams” to showcase the science and skill of Amateur Radio.

Since 1933, ham radio operators across North America have established temporary ham radio stations in remote but public locations on the fourth weekend of June during Field Day to showcase their hobby.

For over 100 years, Amateur Radio — sometimes called ham radio (see sidebar) — has allowed people from all walks of life to experiment with electronics and communications techniques, as well as provide a free public service to their communities during a disaster, all without needing a cell phone or the Internet.

Field Day demonstrates ham radio’s ability to work reliably under any conditions from almost any location and create an independent communications network. Radio operators work 24 hours continuously to make as many contacts as they can with other stations around the country and Canada.

Field Day is a picnic, a campout, practice for emergencies, an informal contest and, most of all, it is fun. It is a time where many aspects of Amateur Radio come together to highlight their many roles. While some will treat it as a contest, other groups use the opportunity to practice their emergency response capabilities. It is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate Amateur Radio to the organizations that Amateur Radio might serve in an emergency, as well as the general public.

The Ely Field Day site was up and running by noon on Saturday. A length of wire was hoisted up a nearby flagpole and two lengths of wires were stretched down to the ground in an inverted “V” configuration. A portable generator hummed nearby, supplying portable power to the radio shack.

Jeff Johnston (call sign K0QXR), from Babbitt, sat next to George Burger (W0PHX), of Ely, in the cramped radio shack to verify that the radio, power source, antenna tuner and computer log-in software were in working order. Just outside, other club members swapped stories and drank coffee on a cool drizzly summer day.

This was the first Field Day event for the fledgling Vermilion Range Amateur Radio Club (K0VRC), formed last summer.

“We have about a dozen members,” Burger said as he tuned the radio. “We have more members here in the summer than winter.” When he is not on the radio he works as a sergeant for the Ely Police Department.

Johnston, a heavy equipment operator for St. Louis County, listened intently for a response to their radio transmission.

They made a contact with another ham operator on the east coast. “The call sign is a United Nations operator and they are located at the World Bank in Washington, D.C.,” Burger said. A few minutes later, the duo logged a contact with a station in Arkansas. “Once we get going, the frequencies will be full of operators,” he said.

More than 35,000 people from thousands of locations participated in Field Day in 2016. “It’s easy for anyone to pick up a computer or smartphone, connect to the Internet and communicate, with no knowledge of how the devices function or connect to each other,” said Sean Kutzko of the American Radio Relay League, the national association for Amateur Radio. “But if there’s an interruption of service or you’re out of range of a cell tower, you have no way to communicate. Ham radio functions completely independent of the Internet or cell phone infrastructure, can interface with tablets or smartphones, and can be set up almost anywhere in minutes. That’s the beauty of Amateur Radio during a communications outage.”

Hams can literally throw a wire in a tree for an antenna, connect it to a battery-powered transmitter and communicate halfway around the world. Hams do this by using a layer of Earth’s atmosphere as a sort of mirror for radio waves.

In today’s electronic do-it-yourself (DIY) environment, ham radio remains one of the best ways for people to learn about electronics, physics, meteorology, and numerous other scientific disciplines, and is a huge asset to any community during disasters if the standard communication infrastructure goes down.

What is the ARRL? The American Radio Relay League is the national association for Amateur Radio in the USA, representing over 171,000 FCC-licensed Amateurs. The ARRL is the primary source of information about what is going on in ham radio. It provides books, news, support and information for individuals and clubs, special events, continuing education classes and other benefits for its members.

The Amateur Radio frequencies are the last remaining place in the usable radio spectrum where an individual can develop and experiment with wireless communications. Hams not only can make and modify their equipment, but can create whole new ways to do things. For more information visit: www.arrl.org.

Anyone may become a licensed Amateur Radio operator. There are over 725,000 licensed hams in the United States, as young as five and as old as 100. And with clubs such as Vermilion Range Amateur Radio Club, it’s easy for anybody to get involved right here in the Ely area.

 For more information, contact Vermilion Range Amateur Radio Club at 218-235-0059 or visit www.arrl.org/what-is-ham-radio.