Event
Operating at night,
Field Day 2010. Photo by Jutti Marsh.
June 22, 2024: ARRL Field Day
This is a recurring event: 4th weekend, in Jun
The goal of Field Day is to practice operating in less-than-optimal conditions.It's the single most popular on-the-air event held annually in the U.S. and Canada. On the fourth full weekend of June each year, more than 35,000 radio amateurs gather with their clubs, groups, or simply with friends to operate from remote locations.
Field day is a picnic, a campout, practice for emergencies, and an informal contest, and, most of all, FUN.
Field Day 2023: Saturday and Sunday, June 24-25. For this year's Field Day, we won't be assembling in-person for a massive group Field Day event like we did up to 2019 at the Art Center College of Design. Instead, each of us will be operating from our own location and setting up our own system, including our own method of logging contacts. As set down by ARRL, it's from11 a.m. Saturday to 2 p.m. Sunday.
Despite not having our usual large gathering, we are still informally sharing our club aspirations, ideas, and activities with other nearby ham groups including the JPL Radio Club, the Caltech Radio Club, and the South Pasadena Amateur Radio Club. Click here to join the JPLARC/PRC/CITARC 2022 Field Day Discussion Group on Facebook.
As a local club group, besides individual participation in the national ARRL Field Day event, our goal is for each individual to make some Field Day style contacts on the air. VHF FM is fine. If everyone in the club makes 5 QSOs each, that's nearly 100 people having fun. If everyone works everyone, that could be over 5,000 contacts. To make that many contacts on 2 Meters, you might have to drive to a high spot, but what else were you going to do anyway? Even putting up an outside antenna will make a substantial improvement to your waltke-talkie. We're counting on you to take part, and to enjoy this festive annual occasion. And we welcome participation by individuals in other local amateur radio clubs.
For some further discussion and ideas, see the June 2023 issue of the Bulletin when it is available.
A national event: For further detail about Field Day as a national event, see the ARRL Field Day web page.