Field Day June 26-27

ARRL Field Day is always held on the fourth full weekend in June. It is an emergency preparedness exercise as well as a public relations event for amateur radio. With COVID-19 restrictions mostly lifted, many amateurs are eager to get back together to operate on Field Day.

We are pleased to announce that WAARC is holding a group Field Day this year. Due to COVID restrictions last year the club chose to take advantage of a temporary rule change allowing stations to work from home and be able to work each other. Though this temporary rule change is also in effect this year, the club has chosen to return to having Field Day at Little Creek Reservoir Park. A map can be found below, as well as on the club’s Field Day page.

Set up will begin on Friday morning after breakfast. The group will be meeting at Sandy’s in Lightfoot around 8am. Around 10am the group will move to the Field Day site to begin putting up antennas.

The group will be meeting again for breakfast at Sandy’s in Lightfoot around 8am on Saturday, and move on to the Field Day site shortly thereafter. Once the radios and other equipment are put up Saturday morning we will begin operating right at 2pm. We will be out at the park all night, operating continuously until 2pm Sunday afternoon.

There will be plenty of food available throughout the weekend, with Subway sandwiches Saturday afternoon, burgers, hotdogs and barbecue Saturday evening, breakfast sandwiches and donuts on Sunday morning, with more hamburgers and hotdogs Sunday afternoon.

As always, we will have two HF stations, one on CW and SSB, and a 6m station capable of operating both SSB and CW. There will also be a GOTA (Get On The Air) station for new and inexperienced operators, as well as for anyone that isn’t licensed. There are plenty of operating opportunities as well as opportunities to help log for the operators. We also are planning to have a satellite station set up to make a contact with a station via satellite.

For anyone that is interested in learning about DMR, there will be an intro to DMR session as well. The session will take place at 4pm Saturday and 11am Sunday. There will be a demo of DMR and information about how to program a code plug for a DMR radio.

If you are new to ham radio, or just want to come out and see what field day is about, come check us out at Field Day. Everyone is invited to come out and check out what is happening.

Directions to WAARC Field Day site:

From Route 60 in Toano, turn on to Forge Road and go about 2 miles. At Lakeview Drive, turn left and proceed about 1/4 mile to the first driveway into Little Creek Reservoir Park. There will be signs along Richmond Rd and Forge Rd for guidance to the Field Day site. There is also a map posted below.