Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 21, 1994 TAG: 9408220041
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Rick Lindquist
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
That familiar phrase from the Emergency Broadcast System test announcement resonated for me recently as I joined a crew of a half-dozen other amateur radio operators in Tidewater for the annual American Radio Relay League "Field Day."
Although it sounds like a social affair - and is for many - the real point of Field Day is emergency preparedness. As I explained in a recent story, Field Day - which got its start in the 1930s - is "ham radio unplugged" for most participants, who set up away from home for a weekend and power their gear from generators, batteries or even solar, water or wind power rather than from the nearest outlet.
The idea is to exchange brief radio messages under these quasi-emergency conditions with many other stations across the United States and Canada doing the same thing. Participants get points for each message.
Now that I'm in graduate school and time is scarce, much of my own routine ham radio is of the "unplugged" variety - from my car, which bristles with antennas that usually draw pointing fingers from kids and puzzled stares from their parents. Because I've agreed to maintain emergency communications gear in my vehicle, the commonwealth gives me license plates bearing my call sign for a mere $1 extra. (In theory at least, this is so the authorities can quickly identify vehicles with emergency communications capabilities in a pinch.)
I got the invitation to Tidewater via Morse code as I chatted with friends via ham radio on the way to work one day. (Another commuter in Massachusetts often joins this group; we've never met.)
Our Field Day group - which called itself "Buster's Beach Bums" after our leader's nickname - was set up outside Norfolk's Lake Taylor High School, which we'd adorned with an array of wire antennas for the occasion. Our short-wave transmitting and receiving equipment sat within a screen house under a long portico, where students normally would board their buses. Someone had brought along a computer to log our contacts with other Field Day sites. A gas generator reverberated nearby.
If this had been a real emergency, we might not have had such cushy digs. We also would not have been able to take time off from operating to visit families, take a shower, get a hot meal (instead of Twinkies and soda pop) or even sleep.
One of my friends brought along his portable cellular telephone, a trendy bit of technology that might seem to obviate the whole Field Day premise: After all, why exchange messages using Morse code (our mode of choice) when it's so easy to keep in touch via more modern and convenient means?
If this had been a real emergency, we might not have telephone service, a link that (miraculously) remained up for most of us in the New River Valley even during last winter's ice storms, even as electric power was lost.
Had it not, municipalities might very well have turned to area hams to bridge the gap until things returned to normal. Exercises like Field Day help prepare the cadre of radio amateurs for that very eventuality.
Radford City Manager Bob Asbury has said his city's Emergency Operations Plan specifically provides for calling on hams to back up the communications services we take for granted in these days of speed dialing, e-mail and cell phones. If telephone service had been lost during the ice storms, he said, the city would have looked to amateur radio.
A real emphasis of Field Day is to exercise the ability to communicate directly from point-to-point without relying on the utility grid. We proved our capability more than 800 times that weekend, even exchanging messages via computerized digital modes on shortwave (which counts for extra points).
If this had been a real emergency, our amateur radio group - and the hundreds of others like ours - would have been able to keep the community connected with an outside world cut off by storm, earthquake, fire or other natural or man-made disaster.
If this had been a real emergency, a hobby with a practical hook sure could come in handy.
Rick Lindquist is a New River Valley bureau editorial assistant.
by CNB