There’s a group in Parksville Qualicum Beach that enjoys hamming it up. And they’re planning to have a field day.
Members of the Mid Island Radio Association will be participating in the international Amateur Radio Field Day exercise, June 23-24 from noon Saturday to noon Sunday at the Parksville Community Park. The event takes place at the end of the beach walk, at the old hovercraft pad.
This event is open to the public and everyone is invited to attend.
Since 1933, amateur radio operators across North America and around the world have established temporary radio communications facilities in public locations on Field Day weekend — the fourth weekend in June — to showcase the science and skill of amateur radio.
Field Day communications are accomplished using emergency power and under conditions which simulate how communications might be provided during a major disaster. More than 35,000 people from thousands of locations participated in Field Day in 2017.
For more than 100 years, Amateur Radio — sometimes called ham radio — has allowed people from all walks of life to experiment with electronics and communications technology and to provide a free public service to their communities.
Amateur radio public service has been especially prominent in times of major disaster when power, telephone and internet infrastructure are destroyed or inoperable.
Radio amateurs played invaluable roles and undoubtedly saved many lives during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, in the 2003 Barriere fire in the interior of British Columbia and this past year in Caribbean countries – notably, Puerto Rico. The beauty of amateur radio in a communications outage is that hams can throw up a wire in a tree, connect it to a battery or solar powered radio and instantly communicate halfway around the world.
Although sometimes thought of as outdated technology, amateur radio is anything but outdated, according to David Ireland of the Mid Island Radio Association.
Ireland said amateur radio is increasing in popularity as a way for people of all ages to explore and experiment in electronics, physics, meteorology, and a number of other scientific disciplines.
Recently, radio amateurs have played major roles in the development of communications satellites and digital communications systems. Traditional radios used by hams have been vastly transformed with the addition of computer technologies to allow for a variety of digital communications methods which can, among other features, connect from remote locations to internet “nodes” via radio.
In Canada, more than 40,000 radio amateurs are licensed by the federal Ministry of Innovation, Science and Economic Development.
The Mid Island Radio Association offers classes each year to train new hams. There’s no age limit.
To learn more or to get involved in the Parksville Qualicum Beach communities, contact Ireland, MIRA president, at davidireland@shaw.ca or 250-586-8394.
— NEWS Staff/MIRA submission