We have been asked if we can provide a kitchen and therefore cook at the Athens County Amateur Radio Association’s Field day event and I in turn have been tasked to evaluate that request. First, if you don’t happen to already know, field day is a 24 hour amateur radio event spanning the US and Canada, the goal of which is to contact as many stations as possible in that time. It usually takes place outdoors and with emergency power like solar power or a generator and so it’s sort of a test of amateur radio groups abilities to act in an emergency situation. Our role with the kitchen would be to provide food for all the hams working there and as a test to ourselves for the same thing: our ability to respond to and work in an emergency situation. I do believe that this field day event is a good test because it is just like a normal emergency in that it is outdoors (not in the comfort of our homes), requires emergency power, lasts for a full 24 hours and we will even be working with the radio group as well which will make the experience even better. All these things are good if we intend to become a good team, especially if we want to perform well in an emergency situation. Above all that, I can’t think of one good reason not to cook at field day.
May 202013
It has come to my attention that I may not have done the best job at evaluating our field day opportunity, so I will try to better my previous post here. First, as I said before, I can’t really think of any reasons not to take advantage of this opportunity and cook at field day. As for more reasons to do it, like I said before, it will be a really good training experience for a real emergency situation. It will also be a good time to work out kinks in the kitchen and we can therefore work on developing a better kitchen. We can see how the existing kitchen system works in an emergency situation and how we can make it better and more efficient. Lastly (for now anyway) it will be another good opportunity to network, meet new people and things like that.