Ham radio group picking up signals

AMENIA — The pavilion next to the Amenia Firehouse was temporarily a jungle of electrical equipment and wires, home for the weekend of June 26, to the Southern Berkshire Amateur Radio Club, which built its broadcasting camp in Amenia for the Amateur Radio Relay League’s Field Day.

The annual event runs for 24 consecutive hours of on-air broadcasting. It’s an opportunity every year for amateur radio collectives across the United States and Canada to practice their skills, setting up antennas in the yard behind the pavilion and operating several basic radios tuned in to different frequencies.

Field Day is also a competition of sorts for each of the groups, with the goal being to make contact with as many other operators as possible, either by voice or continuous wave (Morse code). By 2:15 p.m. on Saturday, members of the Southern Berkshire Amateur Radio Club were hunkered down in front of their radios, searching for contact.

There was also a fourth radio that the club left open for curious members of the public looking to try their hand at amateur radio.

“We always encourage the public to come out and participate,� club President Ed Rubin (call number N2JBA) said. “We set up early this morning and we’re hoping that people will stop by to see what we’re doing.

“This is a good spot in Amenia,� he added. “You have the pavilion for protection, and a nice field to set up in.�

According to the weather forecast thunderstorms were a possibility Saturday night, but Rubin said the club would just have to temporarily disconnect the power to the radios in the event of a storm.

“I can’t remember a year that we went a whole weekend without the threat of thunder,� he said.

Most of the operation ran on an electrical generator, with one of the radios running off solar power, the idea being that in an emergency situation without commercial power, the radio group would still be able to broadcast.

There are approximately 30 members in the Southern Berkshire Amateur Radio Club, and about a dozen were on hand for the start of Field Day. Members, in shifts, broadcast continuously until 10 a.m. the next day, when they had to cut short their event to give the Amenia Fire Company time to set up for last week’s carnival. Field Day would normally run for a full 24 hours, concluding at 2 p.m. on Sunday.

The club makes between 75 and 100 contacts during an average Field Day, Rubin estimated. There are thousands of radio clubs participating across North America each year and member Ed Wilbur (WB1CEI) said that Southern Berkshire has finished right in the middle of the competition for the past 12 to 14 years that it’s participated.

The club has monthly meetings at the Sharon Community Center. Amateur radio operators, referred to colloquially as “hams,� are not as hard to find as one might think, and Wilbur said there are easily 15 similar clubs located within a 50-mile radius.

Field Day is an opportunity for hams to operate out in the open, and a chance for the public to see what amateur radio is all about. But as witnessed in Amenia, broadcasting is often a drawn-out game of patience with operators glued to their headphones, waiting silently and hopefully for some sign that there’s someone else out there on the other end.

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