On Field Day, the fourth full weekend in June, hams around North America , participate in a simulated emergency test, whereby stations are established under adverse and/or adhoc conditions and a specific set of rules. 

The object of Field Day is to set up an operating  station(s) under emergency conditions and to contact as many other participating amateurs as possible within a 24 hour period. Field Day places enormous pressure on an operator's skills, under comparable conditions to those encountered during a real emergency situation. 

Each year, the Wireless Association of South Hills (WASH club), actively participates in the ARRL Field Day. It is an ideal event for Club members to practice their skills in erecting antennas, operating a station and logging, all in the wild. 

There are 2 field day efforts put on by the WASH club this year.  The N3SH group will be Washington county and a smaller group will operate WA3SH from Beaver county.

The N3SH Group site will be located at the Library Sportsman's Club in Library, PA. The WA3SH Group site is located Raccoon State Park , Group Camp  1 in Hookstown , PA.

Site set-up begins around 10:00AM local time on Saturday. Operating starts officially at 2:00PM and continuing around the clock until 2:00PM on Sunday (24 Hours).

Stations will be set-up inside a 1000' circle, placed to take advantage of the site conditions and also to minimize interference and interaction between antennas and receivers.  Each station will be using the N3FJP Field Day Network version Logging Software .

Field Day is an ideal opportunity to get some on-air experience with various types of equipment and band conditions for our newly licensed amateurs. You will experience contest type operations. 

We encourage new members and visitors  to join in  on the fun !

Click HERE for Pictures!!

WA3SH -- Jul 26, 2006 08:07 ET

The mission of this field day was the brainchild off Randy, N3ZK and its mission was to do a simple, minimal field day where there were overnight accommodations (as WA3SH). Opposed to the larger scale effort put on by our club (N3SH)- we had 4/5 operators and we learned where we had been lacking for this type of setup - CW ops and antennas - that alone made our job difficult to keep up with the other club effort.

We had plenty of food, a dozen visitors, including N0VLR's 2 sons, N3KFD's 2 daughters and a bunch of others. N0VLR's boys were so taken back by field day that they are now awaiting their tech licenses from the FCC. Also, N3KFD's daughter is studying for hers!

The weather was hot & dry but we were comfortable in a mess hall with several fans and 2 refrigerators! The "small effort" turned out to be 4A with most radios operating all the time. We also had a network running N3FJP FD software which is really stable.

We enjoyed having the park rangers come up and check things out (right about when we were cooking burgers..Hhhhmmm..) anyway, they seemed interested

We ended up with 650 contacts - mostly phone contacts and a smattering of CW and digital.

We had fun and we learned what it was like to run a complete FD effort on our own - check for pictures on www.n3zk.com. -- N3ZK