From Contra Costa Times
Original publication date: June 20, 2011

Walnut Creek, Calif. — Try your hand at ham radio and learn about local emergency communications at the 2011 Mt. Diablo Amateur Radio Club’s 2011 Field Day, being held from 11 a.m. Saturday through 11 a.m. Sunday — 24 hours — at Heather Farm Park in Walnut Creek.

Though ham radio operators normally need to be licensed to take to the airwaves, anyone who comes to the Field Day will have the chance to use the equipment to establish contact with other operators, most of them in North America but potentially from anywhere in the world, said John Ronan, one of approximately 350 members of the Concord-based Mt. Diablo club, most of whom are from the Bay Area. Members of the general public will be under the supervision of a radio club member.

The club, the largest group of ham operators west of the Mississippi River, was founded in 1935 and has had an annual field day event like this almost from the beginning, except during World War II, Ronan said.

Though the public is welcome, especially between 2 and 4 p.m. Saturday, the Field Day serves as a workout for club members to test various communication networks, ranging from the old tried-and-true broadcast methods top state-of-the-art digital communications. Members will have a contest of sorts, Ronan said, to make contact with as many ham operators worldwide as they can.

Also at the weekend event will be representatives of the Walnut Creek Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT), citizen teams based in specific neighborhoods, working out with their own communications networks.

All radios and transmitters will be powered with the Mt. Diablo club’s own generators and solar panels, and they would be during an emergency if standard electric power was unavailable, Ronan said.

The radio operators will be station near the Heather Farm nature pond and the community center. More information is available at www.mdarc.org or by contacting Ronan at 510-649-9045 or jtronan@aol.com.

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