Emergency Communications Simulation Exercises This Weekend

When landlines and cell phone services fail, amateur radio becomes the most reliable means of communications following a disaster. Since 1933, the ARRL, the national association for amateur radio, has held a nationwide event each June called “Field Day” where local amateur radio clubs each set up portable radio equipment in the field to contact other participating clubs in passing along required information thereby demonstrating their capability to provide reliable communications.

The Milwaukee Radio Amateurs’ Club, the ARRL’s oldest affiliated club, participates annually in this event staging multiple operator stations - comprised of radios, antennas, and logging software - powered by emergency sources including generators and solar panels. “We will be demonstrating our capability and flexibility of various communications modes from the old school reliability of Morse code to the newer modes of digital voice and data. We’ll also have a club-created satellite station equipped to communicate through low-earth orbiting satellites to other hams around the globe with similar equipment,” said Dick Strassburger, N9EEE, President of the club. “And all this will be running off a generator, batteries, or solar panels.”

This year’s event is being staged at the MATC - Oak Creek campus located at 6665 S. Howell Avenue in Oak Creek. Operations will be concentrated adjacent to the Fire Training area. The MRAC invites the public to view this emergency communications simulation at their Field Day site, on Saturday afternoon between 1:00 pm - 6:00 pm, and Sunday between 8:00 am - 1:00 pm.

The MRAC was incorporated in 1917 and is one of the oldest amateur radio clubs in the world. The MRAC became an affiliate of the ARRL in 1919 and remains the oldest affiliated club. For more information about the club, please visit W9RH.org.