ARRL Field Day

The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) has a field day the fourth full weekend in June, which, this year, was June 28-29. 

ARRL Field Day is the most popular on-the-air event held annually in the US and Canada. On the fourth weekend of June, more than 31,000 radio amateurs gather with their clubs, groups or simply with friends to operate from remote locations.  (https://www.arrl.org/field-day)

We had looked up information and found that there was a Ham Radio club in Grand Junction that would be participating in the field day on Saturday. During the days before, Carl had listened in on some of the club's "nets", and participated in one of them. 

Their field day setup was being done in two places -- we visited the one in Grand Junction set up outside the church where they have their monthly meetings. The other one was located up in the Uncompahgre National Forest -- we contemplated driving there as they promised that it would be a lot cooler, but it would have been about a 3 hour drive round trip.

One of these two folks was the net control (moderator) for the net on which Carl participated on Friday. The net that he joined ran from 7:30-8am M-F and was called the "Oatmeal Net". They had ~30 participants joining each morning to share what they planned to do that day!

The setup outside the church

We enjoyed talking with folks. A couple of them have gone to Arizona in the winter, some to Quartzfest out in Quartzsite in January.

I found an article about another club in Vermont who was participating in Field Day. (https://vtdigger.org/2025/06/30/radio-amateurs-practice-for-emergencies-and-hope-for-high-scores-on-field-day/) They seem to work on the competitions more than this club in Colorado was doing. There are many contests within the ham radio community that gets the operators on the air and using their equipment, so they can be ready to help in case of an emergency.