Radio Hobbyists Connect To The World

By BRYNNE MCMURRAY

Moapa Valley Progress

The Moapa Valley Amateur Radio club participated in National Amateur Radio Field Day at the Old Logandale School last weekend. The Field Day was a chance to prepare for emergencies as well as to showcase their radio equipment to the public and practice communicating with other operators around the world.
The local radio club consists of 16 paying members. The annual fee for the club is $25.00 that goes toward repairing and replacing repeaters that allow the radios to function.

The field day was a global event that went from Saturday, June 25 at 11:00 am until Sunday, June 26 at 2:00 p.m.. The local event included a lunch, dinner, and raffle paid for by the club and their sponsors, including Sugar’s Restaurant in Overton who provided water and cookies for attendees.
Since the event is worldwide in scope, the operators were able to talk with people from different countries. With every hour, the radios opened up more and more bands to reach areas farther and farther away from Moapa Valley. Evetually the local radio operators could connect with operators a world away.

There are many competitions for amateur radio operators to see who can “work” people in the most areas. “Working” is qualified by whether or not the operator was able to pass on vital information such as their call number, class of radio operation, and section or location. The sections can be made up of entire states or smaller units in higher population areas.
For each section that was contacted, the operator would get points in order to win prizes from ARRL, or the Amateur Radio national organization.
The operators worked 320 contacts and reached 50 states. Beyond the U.S. contacts also included areas in Mexico and British Columbia.
But for the operators, Amateur Radio Field Day was not just about the competition.
“We try to work as many stations as we can, but we try to imitate field conditions,” said local operator Don DeCaria. “We operate for twenty-four hours on emergency power to have that field experience. It isn’t about the points or competitions. It’s about practicing for an emergency.”
DeCaria was the operator for one of the three main radios at the event. His radio was based on communication through Morse Code.
DeCaria has had his Amateur Radio license since 1966. He learned to work with Morse Code when serving in the Navy for many years.
Although it usually takes a license to run an Amateur radio, during the field day DeCaria and many others were helping curious members of the public to operate the radios and communicate to others across the country and in different countries. There were several large antennae set up in the fields in the back and side of the school. The antennae held wires that enabled the operators to receive signals from all directions and at various frequencies ranging from 20 meters to 80 meters.
Besides Morse Code radios, there were also “phone” or voice radio communications as well as digital radios.
Digital radio operator Brigantia Nivatagena has been an operator for four years, but has been interested in HAM Radios since 1991. She first discovered Amateur Radio at a field day similar to the event.
“That’s how I got into HAM radios,” she said.
But the regular radios didn’t appeal to her as much as the digital radio.
“I’m visually oriented, so this is more my speed,” she said. “Digital is my thing. It’s very experimental. You can basically do what you want with it. People are constantly putting new advancements into it. It’s the future.”
Nivatagena explained that her computer links to her radio through a sound card. Her computer opened up the signals much like a “chat room” and she was able to send emails and messages without use of the internet.
“There’s so much in HAM Radio, but it’s something that’s been lost with the internet age,” she said. “I love the mystique of it. I love to just listen. You never know what you’ll hear.”
She also pointed out some of the many uses of a HAM radio as it aids to emergency preparation and response.
Indeed, the main goal of the local club is oriented toward emergency response, explains MV Amateur Radio Club President, Jim Gollahan.
“We can try on a Friday night to hit across the country, but safety is the main goal,” Gollahan said. “HAM radios are used in many disasters when cellphone and internet connections can be unstable and even blocked. HAM radios have been critical in the solution and response in many recent disasters including the recent local blackout.”
The radio operators also run exercises for safety and preparedness and the speed at which they can contact help. They performed an exercise with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to run a call from Virginia to California. The fastest speed was eight seconds.
“That is much faster than a cell phone, and much more reliable,” Gollahan said. “In the blackout recently, no one else had service. But we were sitting pretty!”
The radios may seem like an old school form of communication, but one prevailing theme of the event was the constant improvement and exploration into the world of HAM radio.
“The more technological advances that are made, just makes more fun for us,” said local club member Craig Fabbi. “It makes it more efficient and more interesting!”