North Hills Amateur Radio Club sets up at park for field day
HAMPTON TWP, Allegheny County — Eric Fowler arrived at North Park before anyone else Sunday morning, June 29, to kick off the second half of the North Hills Amateur Radio Club’s participation in an annual field day.
As the 2025 rendition of Amateur Radio Relay League’s Field Day took place Saturday and Sunday, the club, like most years, joined in. The team set up equipment at a park pavilion on Saturday, and members stayed into the late night hours before picking it back up at 6 a.m. the next day.
By 9 a.m., a half-dozen or so members floated around, chatted with one another and communicated with other operators over the equipment. Some began to make contacts with other operators.
“The goal is for each club or entity to make as many contacts as they can,” Fowler explained. “There’s actually an award for the top stations in the country, but it’s just flat out a lot of fun.”
Fowler, the club’s treasurer, said the club is fairly small compared to some, with membership ranging between the high-40s and low-60s, depending on the year.
“We’re not a huge club or a big contest station,” Fowler said. “I worked one this morning that was ‘10 Alpha’ in Georgia, so they’ve got 10 radios set up. That’s a big club. We’re just small potatoes, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Our goal is to just get out here and have a little fun.”
Most of the members come from across northern Allegheny County and Pittsburgh, but some, like Al Houston, live in Cranberry Township.
Houston said he considers himself a contest operator, meaning he enjoys the competition aspect of the field day. He has been a licensed ham, or amateur radio operator, since 1963.
“It’s easy to remember because I passed my novice (exam), I was waiting for my license to come in the mail. It was actually in the mail. It would have been delivered that day except for the fact (Lee Harvey) Oswald shot President (John F.) Kennedy, and we did get any mail for about two days,” Houston said.
Houston still prefers Morse code, the traditional way of communicating over radio waves, as it is what he was required to learn and it scores bonus points for the competition.
Fowler, on the other hand, said he personally could not wrap his head around Morse code, which was still a requirement to be licensed at the time.
“Back then, you had to use Morse code, which my brain, for some reason, struggles with. Some people like it and are really good at it, but to me, it’s just gibberish,” Fowler said.
When he was young, Fowler learned about electronics from his grandfather before getting a job at a TV repair shop. He also picked up CB radio operating as a hobby during its height.
In 2011, Fowler learned the Morse code requirement had been eliminated, and applied for his technician license, the lowest of the three classes of amateur radio operators. Nowadays, he has made it his “extra” license, the highest of the three.
For Fowler, however, being an amateur radio operator goes beyond just field days and competitions. He has also formed friendships through “rag-chewing,” longer and informal conversations over airwaves.
“The interesting thing is you don’t necessarily need to be physically in proximity or close. I have met some really nice people over the air that I’ve never met face to face … When I had the time, the first thing in the morning, every morning, I would talk to a ham that owns a resort on Kangaroo Island off the coast of Australia,” Fowler said.
But those connections, spread across the over 100 countries and territories Fowler has contacted in his life, are just as strong as an in person friendship in many cases.
“Kangaroo Island is on my list of places to bucket list now, just because I want to meet him face to face,” Fowler said.
The Amateur Radio Relay League’s annual Field Day starts on the fourth Saturday every June, and carries into Sunday.
