2025 Summer Field Days

Come all, ham certificate or not, and experience UARC Field Days June 28-29

This year’s field days will be at the club campus with all activities and radio stations deployed like the club radio facilities don’t exit. Every radio stations will be on the lawn with batteries and generator power, every antenna will be a temporary. It will be a true field experience. Well, the club house will offer restrooms and respite from any potentially inclement conditions -but that’s it! Everyone is welcome to participate. Get those youngsters out and on a radio. Our experienced operators and loggers will guide whoever needs help. And yes, there will be night operations. There is no reason not to join the fun, get some experience, and extend you knowledge and interest in ham radio.

Click here for a little tase of past field day operations.

From Pierre Pierre Thomson KA2QPG

June 28-29 is fast approaching, and we are gearing up for another amazing ARRL Field Day event.

As a quick recap: Uniontown Amateur Radio Club has operated Field Day from a mountaintop hay field near Ohiopyle seven times since 2016, and last year we opted for an indoor operation at the club house. This year, to get the benefits of both worlds, we are planning to run Field Day from the front lawn of the W3PIE club house, but fully independent of the permanently installed club radio facilities. This will allow the club buildings to be used for socializing, food, entertaining visitors and generally escaping from the outdoor environment. Radio operations will be outdoors under tents and canopies as usual, powered by a diesel generator loaned by Fayette County EMA (thanks, Tony!).

Current plans are to operate as category 4A – that is, with a maximum of 4 simultaneous transmitters: two SSB phone stations, a Digital station and a CW station. The main antenna complement will be what we used in 2023 on the mountain: separate dipoles for 20, 40, and 80 meters phone, a 20/40 fan dipole for Digital and an 80m OCF multiband antenna for CW.

This means we can use as many as EIGHT active participants at all times: a radio operator and a logger for each station. That’s a lot of people, and of course we won’t have eight people for the whole 24-hour period. (On-air operations start at 2 pm on Saturday and end at 2 pm on Sunday.) But we should try to keep as many stations on the air as we can, at least in daylight hours. Evening operators are especially needed, as many folks head home for supper and family time. We are never competing for the top ranking in our category, but we have always scored well above average. In 2022 we came in at #12 of 153 category 4A stations, which comes to the 92nd percentile.

Mark those calendars: the weekend of June 28-29 is ARRL Field Day 2025, and that’s where you should be! There will be tasks for everyone, whether licensed or not. We will have a schedule for staffing the four stations, to be filled in as we approach the date of the event. See you there!