Local ham radio operators set Field Day

Van Wert Amateur Radio Club information

Despite the Internet, cell phones, email and modern communications, every year whole regions find themselves in the dark. Tornadoes, fires, storms, ice and even the occasional cutting of fiber optic cables leave people without the means to communicate.

In these cases, the one consistent service that has never failed has been amateur radio.These radio operators, often called “hams”, provide backup communications for everything from the American Red Cross to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and even for the International Space Station. Local “hams” will join with thousands of other amateur radio operators showing their emergency capabilities this weekend.

Over the past year, the news has been full of reports of ham radio operators providing critical communications during unexpected emergencies in towns across America including the California wildfires, winter storms, tornadoes and other events worldwide. When trouble is brewing, Amateur Radio’s people are often the first to provide rescuers with critical information and communications. On the weekend of June 27-28, the public will have a chance to meet and talk with Van Wert ham radio operators and see for themselves what the Amateur Radio Service is about as hams across the U.S. will hold public demonstrations of emergency communications abilities.

This annual event, called “Field Day”, is the climax of the weeklong “Amateur Radio Week” sponsored by the ARRL, the national association for amateur radio. Using only emergency power supplies, ham operators will construct emergency stations in parks, shopping malls, schools and backyards around the country.

Their slogan, “When All Else Fails, Ham Radio Works”, is more than just words to hams as they prove they can send messages in many forms without the use of phone systems, Internet or any other infrastructure that can be compromised in a crisis. More than 35,000 amateur radio operators across the country participated in last year’s event.

“The fastest way to turn a crisis into a total disaster is to lose communications,” said Allen Pitts of the ARRL.  “From the earthquake and tsunami in Japan to tornadoes in Missouri, ham radio provided the most reliable communication networks in the first critical hours of the events.”

Because ham radios are not dependent on the Internet, cell towers or other infrastructure, they work when nothing else is available.

“We need nothing between us but air,” Pitts added.

The Van Wert Amateur Radio Club (“W8FY”) will be demonstrating amateur radio at the Van Wert Emergency Management Agency office, 1220 Lincoln Highway, this Saturday and Sunday, June 27-28. The club invites the public to come and see “ham” radio’s new capabilities and learn how to get a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) radio license before the next disaster strikes.

Amateur radio is growing in the U.S., with more than 700,000 amateur radio licensees currently in the U.S., and more than 2.5 million around the world. Through the ARRL’s Amateur Radio Emergency Services program, ham volunteers provide both emergency communications for thousands of state and local emergency response agencies and non-emergency community services too, all for free.

To learn more about amateur radio, go to www.emergency-radio.org. The public is most cordially invited to come, meet and talk with the hams. See what modern amateur radio can do.