Texas County’s “hams” from the Ozark Mountain Amateur Radio Club will join with thousands of amateur radio operators across the country in the annual Field Days Exercise on Saturday and Sunday.
The Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL) sponsors the annual event to exercise its emergency capabilities of amateur radio. Over the past year, the news has been full of reports of ham radio operators providing critical communications during unexpected emergencies in towns across America, including the California wildfires, winter storms, tornadoes and other events worldwide.
During natural and man-made disasters, often “ham radio” was the only way to communicate, and hundreds of volunteer “hams” go into action to save lives and property. When trouble is brewing, amateur radio’s operators are often the first to provide rescuers with critical information and communications.
On this weekend, the public will have a chance to meet and talk with local ham radio operators and see for themselves. Showing their capabilities, voice communications and even historical Morse Code, the Ozark Mountain Amateur Radio Club will be holding public demonstrations of emergency communications abilities in front of the Pizza Express on South Sam Houston Blvd.
Using only emergency power supplies, ham operators will construct emergency stations and will start the exercise at 1 p.m. Saturday.
They will help the public get on the air by offering opportunities to test for entry level “technician” class or upgrade to more advanced level of amateur licenses. Testing will be at 2 p.m. Saturday in the multipurpose room of the Texas County Justice Center at 519 N. Grand Ave. in downtown Houston.
This annual “Field Day” is the climax of the weeklong “Amateur Radio Week” sponsored by the ARRL. Its slogan, “Ham radio works when other systems don’t,” is more than just words to the hams as they prove they can send messages in many forms without the use of phone systems, Internet or any other infrastructure that can be compromised in a crisis
“We hope that people will come and see for themselves, this is not your grandfather’s radio anymore,” said Willie Adey, president of the Ozark Mountain Amateur Radio Club. “The communications that ham radio people can quickly establish contact with emergency services have saved many lives when other systems failed or were overloaded, and besides that – it’s fun!”
There are more than 650,000 amateur radio licensees in the U.S. and more than 2.5 million around the world. Through the ARRL’s Amateur Radio Emergency Services program, ham volunteers provide emergency communications for thousands of state and local emergency response agencies, all for free.
To learn more about amateur radio, go to www.emergency-radio.org or come by Pizza Express.