MUSCLE SHOALS – This past weekend, the Muscle Shoals Amateur Radio Club (MSARC) participated in Field Day at Gattman Park. Field Day is the largest annual on-air gathering of amateur radio operators in the United States and Canada, emphasizing the emergency communications abilities of amateur radio operators, often called “hams,” to rapidly set up stations in the field and establish communications across the continent. Field Day is sponsored by the ARRL, the national association for amateur radio, and attracts over 35,000 participants each year.
Using the club-owned antennas and equipment, as well as equipment borrowed from the Lauderdale and Colbert County EMAs, three amateur radio stations were established in the picnic area across the parking lot from the splash park. Setup began Saturday morning, with on-air activity commencing at 1:00 p.m. Saturday and continuing through 1:00 p.m. Sunday. One or more of the club’s FCC-licensed amateur radio operators were on the air making contacts on the shortwave radio bands for the entire 24-hour Field Day period. The group made over 2,300 contacts during the Field Day period, spanning the 50 U.S. states, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and a number of Canadian provinces. Contacts were even made with stations as far away as France and Japan.
To further emphasize amateur radio’s emergency communications abilities, all operations were conducted using emergency power supplied by generators and solar panels. MSARC member and Field Day operator Christopher Arthur says, “Although today’s computer and telephone networks provide instantaneous communication worldwide, those networks rely on a large amount of infrastructure that is vulnerable to failure, as demonstrated by the recent regional cellular network outage. Amateur radio needs no such infrastructure to achieve the same result, providing communication links with the world using only the Earth’s ionosphere.”
Mr. Steve Holt, Mayor of Florence, and the directors of the Emergency Management Agencies of the three adjoining counties (Messrs. George Grabryan, Lauderdale County; Mike Melton, Colbert County; and Jody Hitt, Franklin County) visited the Field Day operation to see the club’s communications capabilities first-hand, as did Muscle Shoals Councilmen Chris Hall and Neal Willis.
Due to the rains and flash flooding which affected the Muscle Shoals area on Friday, soggy grounds at Gattman Park presented a challenge for the location of the EMA vehicles and the club’s antenna installations necessary to carry out the Field Day Exercise. Thankfully, staff from the Lowe’s store at Woodward Avenue provided outdoor carpeting and bags of mulch to help stabilize both the ground and equipment.
The club will use experience gained from this year’s Field Day to improve its capability to deploy field stations more quickly and efficiently so that it can better serve the people of northwest Alabama in the event of a catastrophic loss of communications.
Media Release/MaryJo Allmond
Club Secretary
Muscle Shoals Amateur Radio Club (MSARC)
