Field Day 2009
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(Click to enlarge images)
North Kitsap 'Hams' Are There When All Else Fails
By Josh Farley (Contact)
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Photo Gallery
Ham Radio Enthusiasts Participate in Competition
Members of the North Kitsap Amateur Radio Club participated in the
annual Field
Day competition from Saturday to Sunday.
North Kitsap Amateur Radio Club member Ed Saftich, of Kingston,
talks with
another ham radio operator during the annual Field Day competition
at Kitsap
Memorial Park on Sunday. (Steve Zugschwerdt | For the Kitsap Sun)
NORTH KITSAP
From the moment his grandmother showed him the glowing tubes of a
shortwave
radio, John Wilder has been hooked on amateur, or ham, radios.
"I've been a radio geek all my life," the Silverdale resident
admitted.
That was more than four decades ago. And while the way the world
communicates
has drastically changed, ham radio operators continue to broadcast
signals
around the world and even into space, Wilder said. Should other
technology "
cell phones, the Internet, satellites” fail in a disaster, ham radio
operators would be able to launch a new communications network in a
matter of
hours.
"We are the backup of American communications," Wilder said."When
everything else goes south, we're still here."
Along with having fun with their hobby, such emergency preparedness
was the goal
of the American Radio Relay League's annual Field Day contest.
Broadcasting on
broadband launched from Kitsap Memorial Park, the North Kitsap
Amateur Radio
Club's members communicated Saturday and Sunday with other ham radio
operators
across North America.
The group also coordinates with the Kitsap County Department of
Emergency
Management in case of a disaster. They also help run communications
at large
community events throughout the year, including the upcoming
Kingston Fourth of
July parade.
The idea of the weekend contest is to make as many contacts with
other ham radio
stations around the continent as possible in a 24-hour period, which
ended at 11
a.m. Sunday.
A single generator "and a backup just in case" powers the computers
and
radios necessary. Not much electricity is needed: "The cooking
equipment uses
more power," club member John Safrans joked, looking toward the
barbecue that
kept the hams well fed over the weekend.
The club, like many others, attached its seven antennas to trees
"the higher
the better” using potato guns to send them to high branches on
Douglas firs.
From that high a point, the radio waves are emitted in a
figure-eight pattern
and bounce off the ionosphere, which acts as a kind of mirror to
send the signal
back to Earth.
Of the antennas, Wilder is particularly proud of his Sterba curtain
antenna, one
of historical significance, he says, as it is the same type that was
used by the
RCA Wireless company in the 1920s.
North Kitsap's antennas broadcast in a limited, yet broad series of
bandwidths
protected by the government for use by such enthusiasts.
During the contest, operators from North Kitsap's club made contact
with about
217 different stations around North America, and as far away as
Florida.
Messages during the competition are sent vocally or through Morse
code. And
because the competition is more about quantity "the group that racks
up the
most contacts is the winner” Morse code with its "dits" and "dahs"
can be more effective due the simplicity of the messages.
NK club member Bob Marsh of Silverdale was well-skilled in the
competition in
Morse code, rattling off around 40 words per minute, according to
his fellow
club members.
The conversation is mostly kept short and to the point during the
competition,
so that the thousands of stations around the country can accumulate
as many
"points" as possible.
But to those who have been hams for decades, some of the longer
conversations
they've had with strangers around the globe over the radio are the
most
memorable.
Horace Ory, a North Kitsap resident who has been a ham operator of
more than two
decades, recalls radioing with a man in Saipan, a remote island in
the Pacific
Ocean, some years ago. The man reported he'd once lived in Gig
Harbor, and
wanted to know if there was still "mosquito ferries" in Puget
Sound.
"I told him we had roads and cars now," Ory recalled.
Ham enthusiast Wilder has literally made friends all over the world.
Spending 30
years in the Navy gave him a chance to travel to some of the places
where his
fellow ham operators lived. He particularly recalls rolling into
Perth,
Australia, while stationed aboard USS Enterprise one time.
"I already had someone to stay with while there," he said of the
western
Australian city.