Hammin’ It Up on Field Day

Field day has taken on a couple of meanings in our home over the years. For me, as a teacher, Field Day was a lot of fun for school aged kids near the end of each school year and along with traditional relay races and tug ‘o war included jumping in bouncy houses and dunking teachers in a dunk tank. For my husband Field Day signaled the ship wide household cleaning day, a holdover from his days in the Navy, complete with orders to the kids to get their clothes up off the deck and fingerprints off the bulkheads!

For “ham” radio operators a Field Day is a national event when they can practice for emergency situations, real ones, like Hurricane Sandy or Katrina, not the zombie apocalypse, and have fun too. On field days they set up their antennas and radios for a 24 hour period during which they try to raise contact with as many people as possible and score points as they do. What are these “ham” operators practicing for? Amateur Radio Emergency Services and other “ham” radio enthusiasts are often the first people to respond when disasters occur and hello, cell phone towers don’t work. For others, like my husband a former radioman, it’s an opportunity to refresh his skills with Morse code and participate in the original social network with other ham radio enthusiasts, so move over Face Book, it’s Field Day!