Gearing up for Field Day & Promoting Ham Radio
 

This year I decided to try something a little different. Early this week, I
sent an email to the people in my office briefly describing Field Day and
how one of the things we do is send messages. I then told them that they
could help us with our message sending practice by giving me messages to
send to friends and family. Well I am very pleased to report that I have 13
messages to send from non-hams to other non-hams. At least a few people
will be exposed to amateur radio to a small degree.

Dee D. Flint, N8UZE

"Dee Flint" wrote

At least a few people will be exposed to amateur radio to a small degree.

Good job!

73, de Hans, K0HB

"Dee Flint" ) writes:
This year I decided to try something a little different. Early this week, I
sent an email to the people in my office briefly describing Field Day and
how one of the things we do is send messages. I then told them that they
could help us with our message sending practice by giving me messages to
send to friends and family. Well I am very pleased to report that I have 13
messages to send from non-hams to other non-hams. At least a few people
will be exposed to amateur radio to a small degree.

Dee D. Flint, N8UZE

For a few years, one of the local university clubs would operate from
downtown. They'd setup outside the downtown building the club is
normally at, and just use a long piece of coax to the antennas on
the roof if I remember properly.

Perhaps not as much fun as setting up in the country, but it had the
advantage that any passerby could see what was going on, rather than
forcing people to go out of their way to see what was going on.

The former reaches new people, the latter only reaches those who
already know.

Michael VE2BVW

Great idea, nice work Dee.

73 de Bert
WA2SI

Dee Flint wrote:
This year I decided to try something a little different. Early this week, I
sent an email to the people in my office briefly describing Field Day and
how one of the things we do is send messages. I then told them that they
could help us with our message sending practice by giving me messages to
send to friends and family. Well I am very pleased to report that I have 13
messages to send from non-hams to other non-hams. At least a few people
will be exposed to amateur radio to a small degree.

Whoa! Way to go...that's not only thinking "outside the box", but
gift wrapping it with a pretty bow!

Next time, same request, but get them to bring the message to the
FD site!

73/88

Steve, K4YZ

"K4YZ" wrote in message
oups.com...


Dee Flint wrote:
This year I decided to try something a little different. Early this
week, I
sent an email to the people in my office briefly describing Field Day and
how one of the things we do is send messages. I then told them that they
could help us with our message sending practice by giving me messages to
send to friends and family. Well I am very pleased to report that I have
13
messages to send from non-hams to other non-hams. At least a few people
will be exposed to amateur radio to a small degree.

Whoa! Way to go...that's not only thinking "outside the box", but
gift wrapping it with a pretty bow!

Next time, same request, but get them to bring the message to the
FD site!

73/88

Steve, K4YZ


Actually I was rather surprised (and pleased) at the response. I've always
believed that one issue has been getting an awareness of ham radio to the
public. Newspaper articles are fine but they often get skipped over by busy
people. So this idea came to mind.

Basically I presented it as an unusual and fun way to send greetings to
people that would help the club I belong to both get points in the contest
and practice in message handling for emergency preparedness.

I did offer to give anyone interested in visiting, seeing us in action, or
even participating a map to the closest Field Day operation to their
locations but didn't get any takers on that. But maybe next year. Who
knows.

Dee D. Flint, N8UZE

Dee Flint wrote:
This year I decided to try something a little different. Early this week, I
sent an email to the people in my office briefly describing Field Day and
how one of the things we do is send messages.

Way back when in the mid 70s our ham radio club would
do this for Valentine's day. Invite students who had
girlfriends off campus to have us send messages to them.
Was a way for the ham club to get some exposure and a
way to score some points with the student activities
committee (who doled out the money to the various
clubs of the college). This was before the Internet
being commonly available.