Last night at our monthly meeting we presented some of our plans for the Delaware County ARES Field Day Expo.  We are hoping to be able to put on a large scale event at the Delaware County Emergency Services Building (911 Center), but we need several things for this to come together:  We need our final go ahead from DES and County Council, we need COVID numbers to cooperate and not go up. 

Most important, we need your help!  Without having volunteers who can head up committees, and people to commit to being operators, we can not put this event into motion.  We need people to fill out our committee and volunteer interest form below before tomorrow, Wednesday April 13, in order to move forward.

Most of these committee assignments can be done at anytime before the Field Day Expo, and whenever you have the time available to work on them.  Each committee also has an liaison from the ARES leadership, so you won't be alone and have someone you can reach out to with any questions or problems. 

On the day of the event, we need operators, even if you can only do a couple of hours, everyone we can get helps.  We can reach out to our CCDC volunteers for assistance as well, but need ARES members to step up to provide leadership and technical expertise.

We would like all members to fill out the form at the link below.  Please do this before tomorrow, Wednesday April 13, even if you can not help with the planning or operating of the event.

Expo Signup Interest

Field Day Expo Signup Interest (delcoares.net)

https://www.delcoares.net/join-ares-races/field-day-expo-signup-interest

What is Field Day?

ARRL Field Day on the fourth full weekend of June every year is the opportunity for thousands of amateur radio enthusiasts throughout the U.S and Canada to set up temporary communications stations and make contact with like-minded people. Licensed radio operators (often called "Hams") spend the weekend practicing community outreach, emergency preparedness, and technical skills. It's basically radio heaven.

A contest is held each year with individuals, clubs, and teams trying to make contact with as many stations as possible over 24 hours. Field Day will take place on June 25 and June 26 with over 35,00 people expected to take part. It begins at 18:00 UTC Saturday and runs through 20:59 UTC Sunday. Pack your camping equipment, throw up some temporary antennas, and spin the dials on your radio, because this not-to-be-missed event is rich in history, tradition, and technology.

Goals

Field day is a well known event that many people are familiar with. However most people are not familiar with ARES. This event will enable us to show our technological diversity by participating in the many broadcast formats (multiple frequency bands, digital voice and data transmissions etc) associated with field day as well as scheduled ARES exercises that the public would not normally have access to. Running this exercise at the same time as Field Day gives us the ability to demonstrate Message handling at a fast pace as well as the opportunity to communicate with people all around the world. This is intended to recruit new volunteers and to build confidence in our ability to respond to all emergencies.

The Delco ARES Field Day Expo 2022 will be a live exercise to test and demonstrate the capabilities of the organization to deploy, set up and function during the time of need in supporting the Delaware County Department of Emergency Services and the Delaware County community and residents.

The EXPO will test the capabilities of our ARES organization in addition to serve as a platform to exercise and train existing members, utilize the Delaware County Go Kits and members private equipment, recruit new members, connect with ARES organizations and HAM operators locally, statewide and tristate, and introduce the organization to the community and its stakeholders.

Program

This is a 24 hour event to test the ARES ability to communicate with other ARES groups, possibly PA state and/or tri state area set up as a Distinct/Section Simulated Emergency Test (SET).