Field day (June 22-23, 2013) has many purposes. The first that comes to mind is an emergency preparedness. Field day provides a good excuse to call the club members together to setup the equipment in a remote operating area. Thus testing the equipment’s health, and people’s ability to make it work.
If this had been an actual emergency, would you or your club really have set up remote operations? Would team members be able to get to the equipment packed away in a storage room? Would they then go outside and start stringing up wire antennas? Or, would you have actually used the pre-configured emergency operating center with as minimal a setup time as possible? This does not even begin to address having the relationship with local authorities and having a pre-defined role for which individuals are trained.
Field day can be an opportunity for a club to work as a team, get to know each other a little better than just a monthly meeting, or learn from each other an aspect of amateur radio you have been interested in, or had never thought of before. It was at field day when I first operated any of the digital modes. I had misconceptions about the equipment needed, and thought that it was too difficult to tackle myself. Having a club event that is inviting to the public can help attract new interest in amateur radio, especially if there are different aspects for them to see.
Every time I participate in field day, something has been learned. One field day we learned better knots were needed to properly secure a tower. Other times it was that I did not bring the tools or connectors that were needed, resulting to changes to what I put in my “go kit.” As a club we learned what equipment to bring and what should stay connected in the shack. Some of us learned how to lay out a multi-station band plan for a contest that followed the band conditions, and how to adjust when conditions (or equipment) were not what we had planned.
I see field day as a chance to test my equipment, my skills, and possibly learn something new (hopefully not by accident). In past field days, I have participated in the planning and execution of contest style field day where the club put forth a large effort and ranked high in the overall field day contest scoring. Early field days were more about families and friends going camping and maybe making a couple of contacts. More recently, they have been about getting my home station setup with a new capability, working and tested, in time to have fun in the contest.
