On Saturday, June 28th - Sunday, June 29th we held our first annual ARRL Summer Field Day event. This is a long-standing traditional emergency operations 24-hour exercise held during the last weekend of June. Typically, every year there is an average of 31,000 amateur radio operators or special event stations that will actively participate in the 2-day event. Some may operate as individuals or as clubs or just a group of avid amateur radio friends gather to enjoy the fellowship, airtime, food of course and refreshers in emergency set-ups of their radio equipment.
Our club, formed in November 2024 did all of the above and thensome. Having started as a 5-member club, and now having 10 active members, we were able to have 8 members present from start to finish. Although band conditions were not the best, the weather cooperated most of the time except for Saturday when most everything had to be taken down during a severe storm over the location. Members were quickly able to reset everything back up for operations to resume Sunday morning to complete the scheduled event. Making contacts from all over the US and Canada on 40, 20, 15, 10 and 80 Meters using voice or SSB and digital FT8 modes. There were 4 stations using the club call NC4HH to make the contacts to be logged and submitted to the ARRL.
We would like to again thank all of the individuals involved in advertising, promoting, signing official proclamations recognizing the club and amateur radio operators and all of those that have been encouraging and participating with our members to have a successful event. The following individuals/businesses/elected officials have our greatest appreciation, and we look forward to next year's event.
(Cherokee Scout, WKRK radio, WCNG-WCVP radio, Local TV4 cable tv, the Town of Andrews Mayor James Reid and aldermen, the Town of Murphy Mayor Tim Radford and city council members, Cherokee County Commissioners Chair Dr. Daniel Eichenbaum and county commissioners, Cherokee County Assistant Manager Maria Hass, Town of Andrews Administrator Tammy Holloway, Peachtree Memorial Baptist Church for allowing us to utilize the field behind their beautiful church to set up our equipment and last but certainly not least our NC District 120 Representative Karl Gillespie along with his Legislative Assistant Andrew Bailey, and NC Senator District 50 Kevin Corbin).
We would also like to say thank you to all of those volunteers with the ARRL that recognized our hard work and time on obtaining the official proclamations as well as this was a quote from them on a recent post on FB group called ARRL Field Day (Annual Event) from the ARRL The National Association for Amateur Radio "And we would be remiss without mentioning that Shannon Greathead and the Hillbilly Hams Amateur Radio Club secured not one, not two, not three... but FOUR official Field Day proclamations from local and county officials! That might be a record."
They also posted a direct link to the ARRL website where they posted all 4 of our proclamations received. Proclamations
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