Ham radio has Field Day at Putnam County EOC

Thursday, July 3, 2014
Chief Radio Officer Phillip Dean works to make contact on Field Day with amateur radio enthusiasts and emergency contact centers around the country on one of two new ham radios provided to the Putnam County Emergency Operations Center through a grant from the Putnam County Community Foundation.

In an array of emergency situations from large-scale accidents to natural disasters and missing persons, ham radio is used to communicate when all other ways of communicating with the outside world have faltered.

Field Day is a 24-hour event that takes place worldwide and aims to have ham radio operators make contact with other operators the world over. The details of these contacts are recorded into a large database that indicates the locations, times, type of operator and the frequency on which contact was made.

Points are given to radio operators for various types of contacts made during the 24-hour window that is Field Day, encouraging radio operators around the globe to log as many contacts as possible.

Different types of contacts garner different points. A home device contacting an Emergency Operations Center, such as the Putnam County EOC, gives that home device operator more points than if they had contacted another home device operator.

And if that home device was operating on emergency power, more realistically re-creating the circumstances in which that individual would use a radio in an emergency, then they would receive additional points.

Lots of rules, lots of circumstances, lots of fun for amateur radio enthusiasts.

But beyond the fun and the friendly competition, the real purpose of Field Day is to add to an ever-growing database of contact information.

By logging and reporting all of these Field Day contacts, ham radio operators create a valuable web of contact history that can be used in an emergency.

If all telephone, cellular phone and Internet access were to go down during a tornado in Putnam County for example, these amateur radio operators would have an extensive history of how and when communication was made with a variety locations.

Without this history, making contact would be like looking for a needle in the haystack, according to Chief Radio Officer Phillip Dean.

Dean was one of many operators at the weekend Putnam County EOC event, working to make contacts and show interested members of the community just how ham radio works.

"We work hard to study and get our licenses," Dean said.

The 250-foot broadcast tower at the Putnam County Emergency Operations Center provides multiple radio broadcast and reception antennae, as well as satellite dishes and a variety of public safety-related communications to be used in cases where traditional communications methods fail.

To operate ham radio, an FCC designated license is required. There are three levels of licenses (the introductory "technician license," the "general license" and the top-tier "amateur-extra license"), with each building on the experience and knowledge of the previous license; each upgrade gives operator more responsibility and access to a greater amount of the radio spectrum.

There are occasionally pirate radio operators and troublemakers but the highly structured nature of ham radio and the effort put forth by the vast majority of operators ensures that the airwaves are typically treated with great respect.

"It's the hardest test I've ever taken," Deputy Director of Emergency Management of Putnam County Dave Costin said in reference to achieving his amateur-extra license.

And with the advent of computers, software can "splice" existing radio into smaller and smaller useable frequencies, creating more conversations in the same amount of space.

This also requires a compressing of the messages being sent, resulting in messages that appear on screen as gibberish to the layman, looking like a wall-street stock exchange ticker when in reality it is an information packed shorthand that could shame even the savviest of teenage text messages.

"There's Facebook, there's Twitter, and there's ham radio," Dean joked.

The Putnam County EOC recently purchased two new "go kits" through a $3,400 grant from the Putnam County Community Foundation.

The devices are all-in-one radio broadcast units, each are the size of a large suitcase. One of the units operates on VHF/UHF frequencies and the other operates on HF frequency, specializing in long-distance communications.

In this modern age of computers in our pockets, most people might assume that ham radios are a thing of the past, something a few folks do in their basements after they retire, or that exist only in old radio programs, black and white science fiction movies or in the memory of parents and grandparents.

But that would be incorrect.

Ham radio is alive and well with an all-time high of 738,497 licenses in 2012 in the U.S. alone, jumping tremendously from the 662,600 licenses that existed in 2005.

In addition to growing numbers, amateur radio and its operators refine and innovate technologies that affect the rest of the population in ways that aren't often acknowledged or understood.

Those innovations are one reason the FCC continues to reserve a portion of the radio spectrum just for amateur radio hobbyists.

"We operate in the background," radio officer Jesse Johnson said.

The technology we know as Wi-Fi came from the amateur radio community. Communications during the Boston Marathon bombing relied on amateur radio. If search and rescue performs a search, amateur radio is being used to communicate, track and locate.

Remember the scene in 'Gravity" where Sandra Bullock makes contact with an Inuit man, and because they do not speak the same language he and his dogs merely sing to her? That possibility is based in truth as the International Space Station (ISS) is equipped with the same type of radios used during Field Day around the world.

Ham radio, although a bit finicky at times, is reliable.

It is this reliability that warrants a ham radio unit onboard the ISS and it is reliability that will continue to cement amateur radio and its operators at the forefront of emergency communications and recreation alike, from the Putnam County EOC to the International Space Station.

For more information on the Putnam County Emergency Operations Center or on amateur radio (including events and license testing dates) persons may contact Dave Costin at 653-5115 ext. 100 or by searching "Putnam County Auxiliary Communications" on Facebook.

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