HIARC Field Day 2003

Harris-Intersil Amateur Radio Club Field Day 2003

Additional Information Web Page

Time & Location

Saturday, 2:00 pm, June 28, through Sunday, 2:00 pm, June 29.
Wickham Park, Youth Camping Area
2500 Parkway Drive, Melbourne, FL 32935

There is no fee to enter the park for Field Day activities. See the Wickham Park web site if you plan on camping overnight.

Hosted By

HIARC, the Harris-Intersil Amateur Radio Club of Palm Bay, Florida. Call sign K4HRS.

Who's Invited?

Anyone who is interested in or is curious about amateur radio. Children and adults are invited to try their own hand at making a contact at our 'Get On The Air' (GOTA) station. An experienced radio amateur will guide you through making your first (and hopefully not last!) contact. Of course, we invite any ham who'd like to work field day, or who'd like to experience an HF contact for perhaps the first time!

About Amateur Radio Field Day

Every year, on the fourth full weekend in June, ham radio operators from all around the world participate in a live exercise of communication skills called Field Day. It is basically a contest to see who can make the most contacts with other hams over a given 24 hour period, with special awards for various means and methods of radio communication. HIARC stations are set up to simulate (somewhat) operation under emergency-like conditions. Using a portable generator or alternate power sources, transmitting with low RF power, etc. are specifically encouraged by the ARRL contest 'point' system. The ARRL has set the theme of this year's field day to be "When All Else Fails..."

HIARC (Harris-Intersil Amateur Radio Club) Announcement of Field Day Events

This year the Harris-Intersil Amateur Radio Club (HIARC) is hosting Field Day exercises at Wickham Park in the Youth Area at the north end of the park. (Click for map.) The public is invited to witness and participate in activities that hone operators' skills for emergency communications by establishing radio links with other ham stations across the USA and around the world. Five portable radio stations will be set up for the event. Contacts will be made using traditional Morse Code, voice, digital packet radio, and even satellite communications. A special 'Get On The Air' (GOTA) station will be operated to allow non-hams, beginners, or inactive hams the opportunity to run a radio and make a real field-day contact.

United Rentals High Lift Windmill Electricity to run the radios will be provided exclusively by emergency sources, including gasoline generators, batteries, solar, wind, and even an exercise bike human-powered generator.

High-lift trucks provided by United Rentals (on Lake Washington Rd.) will loft antennas for the event almost 100 feet in the air, ensuring that good (and many!) contacts will be made. The U-Haul corporation has also supplied (at a generous discount) a trailer to help protect equipment from the elements, and Portable Air of Cocoa is donating use of an air conditioner to keep the trailer cool.

Food and drink will be provided throughout the event, which runs from 2:00 pm Saturday afternoon, June 28 until 2:00 pm Sunday afternoon June 29. For more information, e-mail HIARCFieldDay2003@att.net, or contact Jim Tonti at 321-729-3073 during business hours.

About HIARC

The Harris-Intersil Amateur Radio Club (HIARC) meets every first Thursday of the month at Ryan's Family Steak House, 3299 S. Babcock St., Melbourne. Supper is at 6:00pm, a short business meeting is at 7:00pm. Our programs start around 7:20pm. You can visit our web page at http://www.qsl.net/hiarc/. Be sure to take a look at the photos and contest scoring results from Field Day 2002.

Detailed Rules & Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about Field Day

The American Radio Relay League (ARRL), distributes a pdf containing rules, forms, and very detailed information about Field Day. Click here to view/download a local copy of this file (772k).

More Information about Renewable Energy

Renewable energy has many similarities to emergency power. Field day last year was powered by a combination of fossil fuel (gasoline powered generator), batteries, a wind mill, and an exercise bike generator. See this photo gallery at FIT for some examples. The photo album for Field Day 2002 at the HIARC web site has more pictures.

This page was created using hand editing and Netscape 4.7. Some of the links to other sites may work best (or even at all) using Internet Explorer.
This page has been visited AT&T Web Page Visit Counts times.
For comments, complaints, or suggestions, send e-mail to HIARCFieldDay2003@att.net.
The URL of this page is http://HIARCFieldDay2003.home.att.net

Last Updated: 06/07/03 10:10pm JGT (BT's improvements.)