The Playground Amateur Radio Club had a great time with many visitors and operators! Be sure to catch us at the Pile-Up next Sunday!
Category: Field Day
Winter Field Day at PARC! Has had an awesome start! There are more photos to come! Be sure to catch us again tomorrow for more Playground fun!
What a weekend!
Wow what fun at the Playground ARC Garage Sale and with @everyone Playground Amateur Radio Club Pile-Up! We topped it off with a great net! So much activity and great collaboration! Here’s a few pics! Sorry we weren’t shutter bugs but hey, sometimes you just gotta Ham It Up!
At the Pile-Up, we here at PARC pulled out the Fan Dipole to test and tune it. As well, we are coming up with a permanent deployment plan to install it on our tower! This will aide us in standing up Station 3 for Winter Field Day at the Playground Amateur Radio Clubhouse! More to come on this project!
By the way, we DX’d Paraguay with ease!
PARC met at Fred Gannon State Park in Niceville Florida and utilized back pack radio kits to communicate in multi-mode operations while teaching young and old hams the tricks to making the most of their time and mentoring others as to how to set-up, tune, and troubleshoot any issues that would prevent a barrier to communications!
Mayor Daniel Henkel even stopped in and was very inquisitive on our capabilities and how we can provide communications for the community with limited operations for emergency situations! But mostly we explained that Field Day is about “FUN” and teaching others how to communicate away from brick and mortar facilities operating in a remote capability to ensure message handling and specialized traffic information is reported and recorded!
Did you make Field Day?! Did you miss Field Day? What was your impression? We want to hear from you as the Amateur Radio Community is always willing to hear feedback and evolve with your interests in mind! Be a part of the conversations and radio operations by joining us at the Playground Amateur Radio Club!
The Playground Amateur Radio Club is honored to participate in 2025 ARRL Field Day!
YOU are invited to experience Amateur Radio & communicate the world over! Come out to
enjoy field communications demonstrating public service, emergency preparedness, community outreach, technical skills and STEM!
The goal is to set up reliable communications, making contacts worldwide during simulated abnormal situations!
The Playground Amateur Radio Club of Fort Walton Beach, Florida will operate at:
Fred Gannon Rocky Bayou State Park, 4281 State Road, Niceville, FL.
The Playground Team will be at the Pavilion nearest the boat launch on the Northwest Side of the park!
Day 1: June 28, 2025
Times: 1pm to sundown
Day 2: June 29, 2025
Times: 9am to 12pm
Talk-in/monitor: 146.790, 100hz, (-), 0.6
What a great time all of Team PARC had! We went to Fred R. Gannon State Park in Niceville Florida and operated as a 2 Oscar. We had satellite contacts, VHF contacts, and HF contacts! The best part was of course hunting down the signals. Thank you to all who participated on one end of the microphone or the other!
From the ARRL, the release of the Field Day Results have been formally announced!
PARC operated at Fred R Gannon State Park as we announced in the News Feed back in late June 2024. Below are the results of the wonderful work of our volunteers and visitors!
Thank you to all who have been involved and continue to devote time and passion to this wonderful hobby!
The results are submitted and here they are in raw form!
June 22-23, 2024 Field Day
Site Responsibility Ed Underfinger
Safety Ed Underfinger
Elected official visitor Dan Henkel, Mayor of Niceville
132 QSOs
Power mod x2
100 pts Emergency power
100 pts Public location
100 pts Public Information Table
100 pts Alternate power
100 pts Elected official visit
100 pts Social Media
1064 pts total
This is great considering performance in years past and we sure are grateful for the participants, visitors, and teammates who made this possible! The next adventure for Team PARC is going to be the continuation of our awesome Sunday Pile-Ups at 3pm located at 17 First St SE in Beautiful Downtown Fort Walton Beach Florida and our meetings and nets as indicated on the clubs calendar!
We will have more in store as we progress with multiple projects, the continuation of WIRES-X on 146.400, Room 91172, 01172! This is been a great work in progress by Mark, NC4MR! We also are working FT8 with him for a J8 call. Keep up with us and don’t forget to come visit us and get some of Randy’s, KJ4FNB’s Sausages! Curious? Come see him! Super delicious!
Wow what a weekend! Outside, fresh air, friendly faces, open communication, and QSO’s for Field day!
A very large thank you to all who participated, made contacts, and just flat out, had fun! This was a wonderful event for Team PARC at Fred R Gannon State Park in Niceville Florida! We hope your field day was wonderful as well! PARC racked up the contacts and used only battery and solar power! To add to that, we used gear that was designed for ease of use and rapid deployment! We would like to make a special thank you known to the Mayor of Niceville, Dan Henkel, who came out and got involved with Amateur Radio, understanding its operational capability, and seeing first hand how dependable Amateur Radio Communicators are to the community at large!
Another special thanks goes out to the Twin Cities Amateur Radio Club for attending the PARC Field Day Event and operating under the Club’s call, W4ZBB! We would also like to that the staff at Fred R Gannon State Park for having us and taking an esteemed interest in what we do, how to get licensed, what gear works good versus what does not, and offering input for future events!
Enjoy the photos below and take note of AA0EU’s ingenuity of a pole for his counterpoise!
