Saturday field day ‘Like Christmas’ for amateur radio operators
WINFIELD TWP — Antennas and portable radio towers peeked up from behind the Winfield Township municipal building Saturday and Sunday, June 27 and 28. Amateur radio operators created a makeshift communications center there that might as well have been the Taj Mahal compared to the bases that other people around the country were using that same weekend.
The 24 hours between 2 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday comprised the annual field day for Amateur radio operators — or Ham radio users — that takes place each year on the fourth weekend of June. The Butler County Amateur Radio Public Service Group participates in the event each year. It brings as many of its members as possible to the Winfield Township building to attempt to connect and communicate with other operators around the world.
Known by its call sign K3PSG, radio operators sat two-by-two around tuners, speakers and computer monitors, scanning the airwaves for voices and spikes in wave activity throughout Saturday and Sunday. Every connection they made was points for their club, Savage said, with the entire day being a friendly competition between clubs under the National Association for Amateur Radio, said the Butler County club’s president, charter member Julian Savage.
Competition aside, Field Day gets almost every amateur radio enthusiast on the airwaves at some point over its 24 hours. It’s the perfect time for users to get some practice. Because the club is the backup communications network for Butler County Emergency Services, it has six repeaters in the county allowing operators to reach anywhere they would need in an emergency.
“Picture this, they just had that big earthquake, that place is devastated. Nothing is going to work, phones, anything,” said Joe Sciulli, a member of the Butler County club. “You can take these radios down there, put up them poles, put up antennas, battery hook a radio up and we can communicate for them. We can take another guy and put him 100 miles away and communicate back and forth.”
Even though numerous devices were running Saturday, none of them were plugged directly into the township. They were all running off emergency power — batteries, generators — because part of the purpose of field day is for operators to practice setting up their own gear, from antennas to power sources.
Field day was born out of ham radio operators literally setting up in fields, where they might set up if they are needed in an emergency. Amateur radio operators must be certified by the Federal Communications Commission before being allowed on the airwaves. Jim Cornwell, another club member, said all this practice is necessary.
“These things are complicated, you've got to learn how it works, and how the transmissions go,” he said. “You can do so much with this stuff … You've got to practice with it.”
Part of becoming a certified amateur radio operator is knowledge of the radio wave spectrum, and how to send signals that can reach people around the nation, or even around the world.
Savage explained that each antenna is cut for a different wavelength, and receive signals bounced off the ionosphere — as well as other reflecting surfaces in the sky — which are transmitted by other radio operators. Throughout the day, different antennas can pick up different signals because of changes in the atmosphere, so the more operators at a station, the better.
A digital map of the atmosphere with live updates stationed on a table at the township building Saturday helped operators keep up with the changes.
“As we progress through the day from morning to afternoon to night, different bands, depending on the ionization of the ionosphere will become better, some will drop off and become inactive,” Savage said. “So, all through the day, we'll be changing bands and frequencies to match the ionization.”
The repeaters placed around the county are basically boosters to amplify outgoing signals to reach farther distances. There is even a repeater in the Winfield Township Municipal Building, and several more stationed around Butler County.
“Repeaters where we transport to a repeater and it transmits the signal down from the high spot to another area … are excellent for gaining distance on your signals,” Savage said. “Over the six repeaters we have in Butler County, we can cover the whole county north to south.”
Much of the equipment at field day belonged to the group or its members, who spent the morning and early afternoon Saturday setting them up, as per the rules of the contest. Field day spanned 2 p.m. Saturday to 2 p.m. Sunday so people around the world would have the daylight to contact people on the other side of the world, and Savage said people would be at the municipal building all night listening for operators.
And operators made connections even a few hours into the day Saturday.
“We got South Carolina, Ontario south, Tennessee, north Florida,” group member Dan Metrick said. “We exchange sections and our call sign and it's pretty short and sweet. Sometimes in the middle of the night, you can say, ‘What town are you near’ or something.”
Aaron Balfour and his son, Logan Balfour, even made contact via a passing satellite Saturday afternoon. Balfour had a directional antenna and a satellite tracking application on his phone, which showed that a satellite would pass about 30 degrees over the horizon from Winfield Township around 3 p.m., offering him a 12-minute window to make connections.
He pointed his antenna toward the horizon at a diagonal angle, and adjusted his aim to follow the sound it picked up on his speaker. Logan stood by with a recorder, to capture the voices coming through, one of which said it was coming from Texas.
Other operators have also reached far away users from their home setups, like Metrick, who has reached people in Australia and Russia, and Sciulli, who has spoken to astronauts on the International Space Station.
And operators don’t need huge technology budgets to start communicating — Sciulli is able to speak cross country with a five-watt walkie talkie, and an understanding of the ionosphere.
Savage said the Butler County Amateur Radio Public Service Group offers certification tests to people interested in becoming amateur radio operators, and the group had a test scheduled for Saturday afternoon.
“The FCC decided 20 years ago, 25 years ago, that they were going to break off ham radio operators and certify ham radio operators to become volunteer examiners for the FCC exclusively for the ham radio license,” Savage said.
The radio operators at field day Saturday said that while ham radio is a fun and interesting hobby, it can also be useful and give people a way to contribute to the well-being and safety of their neighbors. Sciulli said ham radio operators report local weather conditions to the National Weather Service, and reports on severe weather can help the service confirm dangerous conditions.
Sciulli was on the airwaves when a person reported the forming of a tornado Sunday June 14.
“There was a tornado that was reported immediately from a ham radio operator on our weather net. He saw a rotation, and that was it,” Metrick said.
“I was running the net that night, got on a computer and sent it out. They sent someone from the National Weather Service out and they checked it and they confirmed that it was a tornado,” Sciulli added.
For more information about the Butler County Amateur Radio Public Service Group, visit its website at k3psg.com.
