Wednesday activities

On Wednesday, the Sunlife Amateur Radio Club had its Winter Field Day scheduled to occur. These field days are a practice in setting up equipment in the field for emergencies. They are often scheduled at the same time as other clubs nationwide, usually in January, but Sunlife has theirs in February. There is also a big field day in June (Summer Field Day).

Field days involve setting up radios and antennas on different frequencies, performing remote operations, off grid, no AC power, making as many contacts with other stations as possible, being seen by the community - making folks aware of Ham Radio, and inviting friends and family and having a pot luck. You can find more information here: http://www.arrl.org/field-day

Unfortunately, Wednesday was a cold, rainy, blustery day in Mesa (cold = 50s) - the Hams set up radios out in Red Mountain park and were broadcasting, but the decision was made to move the pot luck into a local church building (which all the non-Ham spouses and, I think all the Ham's too, were *very* happy about!).

We didn't get any pictures at the park...

... but we did get a couple of pictures at the pot luck...

There was plenty of food for everyone!

Wednesday evening, we had signed up to attend a "Marriage Event" at a local church -- when we were out driving around one day, we saw a sign out about the evening event and decided that spending an evening concentrating on strengthening our marriage would be a good thing to do...

The event was called "Spark" with a subtitle of "Ignite your marriage" -- there were folks in the lobby area of the church taking pictures (with our phones) as we arrived and they gave us sparklers to signify that we were "sparking" our marriage.

Inside the auditorium -- it was unfortunately (in my opinion) a very dark room with a professional production environment which made doing things like taking notes (which I like doing to keep my mind centered) very difficult.

At the end of the session, a picture of the 2 couples who were teachers during the event.

We are glad we went and thankful that the church had the event, and grateful for some reminders that we can apply to our marriage.