Members of the Ozark Mountain Amateur Radio Club is participating in the annual 24-hour National Amateur Radio Field Day exercise Saturday and Sunday at Pizza Express on U.S. 63 in Houston.
Since 1933, operators of amateur radio – often sometimes called “ham” radio – around North America have established temporary radio station in public locations during Field Day to showcase the science and skill involved.
For more than 100 years, ham radio has allowed people from all walks of life to experiment with electronics and communications techniques and provide a public service to their communities during a disaster, all without needing a cell phone or the Internet. Field Day helps demonstrate ham radio’s ability to work reliably in any conditions from almost any location, and create an independent communications network.
More than 35,000 people at thousands of locations participated in Field Day last year.
It’s easy for anyone to pick up a computer or smartphone, connect to the Internet and communicate, with no knowledge of how the devices function or connect to each other,” said Sean Kutzko, of the American Radio Relay League (the national association for amateur radio). “But if there’s an interruption of service or you’re out of range of a cell tower, you have no way to communicate. Ham radio functions completely independently of the Internet or cell phone infrastructure, can interface with tablets and smartphones, and can be set up almost anywhere in minutes.
“That’s the beauty of amateur radio during a communications outage.”
Ham operators can literally throw a wire in a tree for an antenna, connect to a battery-powered transmitter and communicate around the world.
“Hams do this by using a layer of Earth’s atmosphere as a sort of mirror for radio waves,” Kutzko said. “In today’s electronic do-it-yourself environment, ham radio remains one of the best ways for people to learn about electronics, physics, meteorology and numerous other scientific disciplines, and is a huge asset to any community during disasters if the standard communication infrastructure goes down.”
Anyone can become a licensed amateur radio operator, and there are more than 725,000 licensed hams in the U.S. – as young as 5 years old and as old as 100.
“And with clubs like ours, it’s easy to get involved right here in Texas County,” said Ozark Mountain Amateur Radio Club president Willy Adey.
The event in Houston will begin at 1 p.m. Saturday and continue until 1 p.m. Sunday. For more information, call Adey at 417-260-4626 or log onto www.arrl.org/what-is-ham-radio.