It's Field Day Weekend

As I write, it's Saturday evening the 26th, just turned the 27th in UTC.  It's the last weekend in June and that marks the weekend of the year when American ham radio operators conduct the biggest operating event of the year that isn't a contest: Field Day.  Strictly speaking, Field Day (or FD) is an event organized by the American Radio Relay League, or ARRL, so people who are opposed to the ARRL for whatever reason look down on the event.  Saying it's not a contest is one of those things that's technically true, by definition, but people submit scores and their logs for bragging rights.  FD runs from 1800 hours UTC on Saturday (2PM EDT) to 2059 ( 4:59:59 PM EDT).  Most of the big contests run from 0000 Saturday to 2359 Sunday.

The purpose of Field Day is to get hams comfortable operating in different and austere conditions, as we often do while doing emergency communications.  The ARRL describes it like this:

Field Day is ham radio's open house. Every June, more than 40,000 hams throughout North America set up temporary transmitting stations in public places to demonstrate ham radio's science, skill and service to our communities and our nation. It combines public service, emergency preparedness, community outreach, and technical skills all in a single event. Field Day has been an annual event since 1933, and remains the most popular event in ham radio.

I've operated many FD events in my 45 years as a ham.  The first time was with a couple of the friends who helped me get my license.  We got permission to park a van in an unused field at the junior college, one guy borrowed a generator from his company, and we ran random length wires into nearby trees.  It was the first time I encountered the law of Field Days in Florida: it's gonna rain on Saturday.  The rain will be a thunderstorm. Over the years, I've repeated that in small groups and large club stations running several stations along with temporary antenna towers and multiple AC generators.  I've also operated FD with a fixed, permanently installed station, just to hand out points to the guys in the tents outside (in Field Day lingo, that's a class 1D station; one transmitter running on permanent line power.)   Because air conditioning.

An ARRL picture from FD 2019.  It looks like (probably) three stations are visible

If you're expecting to put up stations if/when the SHTF, there are good lessons to teach yourself in putting up a FD station.  I should have mentioned FD earlier, but any day can be field day if you just want to learn how to put up a station, or operate portable.  The terms to look up are POTA - Parks on the Air - and SOTA - Summits on the Air.  These are popular operating events in which people take a station to a park or mountain summit, generally with battery power and Field Day-type antennas.  They are generally, but not always, low power (QRP).  You just don't get the advantage of having experienced guys to show you how it's done.