Field Day 2019 at UC Davis
KCRA stopped by our field day this year and had a short new clip!
About 25 local operators will be among more than 40,000 radio amateurs in North America participating in field days organized by the ARRL, an amateur radio association. They are from:
Yolo Amateur Radio Society/Mt. Vaca Radio Club (YARS/MVRC)
Yolo County Amateur Radio Emergency Service (Yolo ARES)
Sacramento Amateur Radio Club (SARC)
UC Davis Amateur Radio Communications (UCDARC)
The local operators set up antennas, radio stations, tents and a cooking area to establish a field station independent of utilities and other amenities.
Throughout the event, they communicated with other amateur radio operators around the world using voice, Morse code with its fast-paced beeps, and other digital forms of communications such as radio teletype. Last year, they logged about 200 contacts.
Gary Matteson, a researcher in biological and agricultural engineering at UC Davis, is president of YARS, assistant emergency coordinator for Yolo ARES and a member of UCDARC.
He says amateur radio, which transmits and receives messages on radio frequencies set aside for noncommercial use, is a reliable and powerful means of emergency communications especially when telephone, cell phone and internet services are overloaded or damaged.
As part of its comprehensive emergency preparedness program, UC Davis operates an amateur radio base station at its Emergency Operations Center and has a repeater station. In an emergency, a controller at the base station could relay information to and from group members dispatched where communications support was needed and also communicate with partnering agencies.
Return to the Sacvalleyares.org