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Radio Club’s Field Day takes pandemic into account

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Tom Muye works on his ham radio as the Fort Myers Amateur Radio Club held its annual field day at the North Fort Myers Community Park on Saturday.

The concession stand at the North Fort Myers Community Park looked a lot sparser than it usually does this time of year.

This past weekend, amateur radio enthusiasts from throughout the area came for the annual Field Day event, which gets its members out of their homes and into remote situations over a 24-hour period, where alternative power sources may be needed to power their radios in the event of an emergency.

And an emergency of such that has been occurring worldwide — a global COVID-19 pandemic — forced the Fort Myers Amateur Radio Club to change the way it conducted things.

The radio operators used the other side of the building, where the 4-H kids gather, to increase the ability of the group to social distance. Most of the members, who were generally older, also wore masks.

Tom Muye, former president of FMARC, said it was an opportunity to set up and operate anywhere and let the public see what they do.

“It’s practice for emergency. The club has done this for a long time and I’ve done it since 2004,” Muye said. “If there’s a hurricane, we can set up just about anywhere and get messages out to anyone.”

The operators started getting their antennas up at 9 a.m. for the 2 p.m. start.

The idea is for the operators to contact other operators in all the areas of the country from coast to coast and Alaska and Hawaii. By 4 p.m. they had gotten off to a good start, with nearly the entire Southeast U.S. contacted, though they hadn’t contacted anyone in the Tampa area, the closest zone to them.

The operators did this for the next 24 hours, with many of them staying the entire time, attempting to contact as many people as possible, even during the early morning hours.

“It’s spooky out here sometimes. It’s quiet except for the generator and what you hear on the radio,” Muye said. “The radio holds your interest.”

“You go stir crazy when the bands go down. You get tired and you can’t wait for breakfast,” said Brian Darley, who was at his ARISS radio (acronym for Amateur Radio International Space Station). “You look forward to going home to bed after 36 hours straight.”

Bob Pantazes, of the membership committee, was doing digital ham radio operations, trying to find other radios and communicate with.

“We make contact with other computers to try to find stations. We don’t use voice. Some use it and other use Morse Code,” Pantazes said. “We’ve been doing fair. The bands aren’t good. There’s been no solar activity and for the last two weeks things have been down.”

Jon Scharbrough, who has been in the hobby for 17 years, said he didn’t plan on spending the whole night there, as he is not a night person, but would return first thing in the morning.

“It’s something that has always interested me. I have found it enjoyable and have gotten into different facets of the hobby,” Scharbrough said, adding that his job had him travelling a lot and was unable to participate. “I’ve paid my dues, but I’ve really come to enjoy field day.”