Amateurs from Nashoba Valley Area join in national deployment

Public Demonstration of Emergency Communications June 26 - 27

PEPPERELL, MA May 19, 2010 The Nashoba Valley Amateur Radio Club (http://www.n1nc.org) will be demonstrating Amateur Radio at The Heald Street Orchard, Pepperell, MA on June 26 & 27, around the clock, starting Saturday morning to Sunday afternoon. They invite the public to come meet and talk with local ham radio operators and see for themselves what the Amateur Radio Service is about. Demonstrating a variety of radio communications capabilities, including historic Morse code, hams from across the USA will be holding public demonstrations of emergency communications capabilities.

This annual event, called "Field Day" is the climax of the week long "Amateur Radio Week" sponsored by the ARRL, the national association for Amateur Radio. Using only emergency power supplies, ham operators will construct emergency stations in parks, shopping malls, schools and backyards around the country. Their slogan, "When All Else Fails, Ham Radio Works” is more than just words to the hams as they prove they can send messages in many forms without the use of phone systems, internet or any other infrastructure that can be compromised in a crisis. More than 35,000 amateur radio operators across the country participated in last year's event.

Local Amateur Radio operators will join with thousands of operators throughout the United States to show off their emergency capabilities on June 26 & 27. Over the past year, the news has been full of reports of amateur radio operators providing critical communications during unexpected emergencies in towns across America including the California wildfires, winter storms, tornadoes and other events worldwide. During Hurricane Katrina, Amateur Radio – often called “Ham Radio” - was often the ONLY way people could communicate, and hundreds of volunteer “hams” traveled south to save lives and property. When trouble is brewing, Amateur Radio’s people are often the first to provide rescuers with critical information and communications.

There are over 650,000 Amateur Radio licensees in the US, and more than 2.5 million around the world. Through the ARRL’s Amateur Radio Emergency Services program, ham volunteers provide emergency communications for thousands of state and local emergency response agencies, all as unpaid volunteers.

To learn more about Amateur Radio, go to http://www.emergency-radio.org. The public is most cordially invited to come, meet and talk with the hams. See what modern Amateur Radio can do. They can even help you get on the air!

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