Schaumburg Amateur Radio Club Field Day in the Winter

Amateur Radio Field Day in the winter

Cliff Sowka K9QD

Schaumburg Amateur Radio Club (SARC) participated in the American Radio Relay League's (ARRL) Winter Field Day on Saturday Jan. 30. The event was held with 29 club members in attendance and even welcomed a visiting ham from Germany.

In the United States, Field Day has been traditionally conducted during the last week of June each year as a way to demonstrate Ham Radio's emergency radio communication capability. The Field Day event is organized by local radio hams to remotely install radio equipment running on battery or portable power generation, stretch wire antennas between adjacent trees, or otherwise erect transmitting/receiving apparatus with associated radios to demonstrate emergency preparedness. During times of natural disaster, communications outages, or power interruption, the Ham Radio hobbyists are able to 'get through' when other forms of communication are down.

SARC participates in the annual Field Day event sponsored by the ARRL during June of each year and has historically assembled club members' equipment on village property in Schaumburg for the annual exercise. This year, the club decided to participate in the more difficult Winter Field Day. Activity during Field Day is comprised of transmitting and receiving wireless radio contact with other Ham Radio operators across the nation, logging the contact records, and submitting results to the ARRL for nationwide summary.

Hobbyists interested in electronics, radio, and the art of communications have been trained in Federal Communications Commission (FCC) radio rules and regulations, have been examined by volunteer Ham Radio Examiners (VE) and subsequently licensed to operate radio transmission equipment.

Many electronics enthusiasts enjoy listening to Short Wave Radio, experimenting with microprocessors, personal computers, semiconductors and associated test equipment and have taken their interest levels higher by becoming licensed Ham Radio Operators so they're now able to legally transmit their own radio signals around the world.

Schaumburg Amateur Radio Club (SARC) is actively supporting our local government in providing optional emergency radio communication backup and conducts routine exercises with the village that assist with membership skill and organizational training.

Schaumburg Amateur Radio Club welcomes all radio enthusiasts who wish to become licensed Ham Radio operators as well as those who already have FCC transmit authority on the Amateur Radio Service frequency spectrum.

SARC has twice-monthly Construction Project meetings where we assemble myriad electronics projects, repair and test radio equipment, and have a generally good time building circuit boards, soldering wires and assembling electronics projects related to Ham Radio.

For information, contact www.n9rjv.org