Field Day Adventures!

Field Day is North America’s major amateur radio emergency preparedness event, held every year in late June. No doubt about it, Field Day (FD) is a time-honored ham radio tradition with many nuances. Foremost for many radio amateurs, FD is an annual test of our ability to rapidly put HF (high frequency) and VHF (very high frequency) stations on the air, and then operate for 24 hours, attempting to contact as many ham operators and ARRL sections as possible.

Each contact counts for points, much like the CQ World Wide DX contest. The ARRL and neighboring Radio Amateurs of Canada (RAC) have 84 sections in total, comprised of Alaska, Hawaii, and Pacific territories, U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, 13 in Canada, and 67 in the continental U.S. This summertime radio exercise tests our abilities to send traffic (communicate) throughout North America by somewhat simulating an emergency operation. FD annually provides us a date to simulate a communications failure event, so operators can set up in the field and make their stations available to local and state agencies to pass along health and welfare messages if such an emergency did occur. This year FD is the weekend of June 25-26 from 18:00 UTC to 20:59