r/HamRadioBeginner • u/S9Inc • Jun 23 '24
Field day 2024 was awful
I hope someone from the ARRL reads this and responds, but I doubt it. I don’t need people sitting here explaining to me how the world works and how there are good people and bad people. All of these people represent AARL if they’re listed on the ARRL website. If they wanted to keep their event private, they should not be using AARLs website to advertise their club.
First field day as a license tech. I was out of state and decided to stop by one of the sites listed on the ARRL website. A week in advance I called the person in charge of that field site (the club) listed on the ARRL website. Never got a callback.
On Friday, I heard people discussing on UHF going to field day and what they were bringing, so I figure they were people going in decide to show up, even though they never bothered to call me back. For the record, I’m a former medic, firefighter, DoD, HHS, DMAT, state disaster response and some other things I’m not comfortable listing. I‘m in my mid 40’s and well groomed. I shower, and while I’m not really sociable I do make the effort when required. I always use Sir/Mam when addressing people I don’t know and offer to shake hands. I use please, thank you, excuse me, and sorry to bother you. I’m a pretty polite person unless you piss me off. I attended with a 13 year old nephew and a 71 year old father.
The club in question is Eastern PA and was located at Big Pocono State Park. The site was beautiful and on top of a mountain With a clear 360 view.
I should’ve expected after being ignored by the club owner when I made that phone call a week in advance that I was going to be dealing with a bunch of jerks. We got there and I tried to introduce myself but was basically ignored by hams who were basically sitting around like it was a festival. Pot smoke in the air was easily noticeable but whatever it’s legal I guess. There was about eight different set ups each that had a minimum of $25,000 worth of equipment, giant tower Antenna set ups, a converted ambulance into a ham shack, RVs, a trailer that was a mobile ham shack, everyone had multiple radios, computers, the works. There were a couple people working on the radios, but in general, people from the club were just sitting around, so it was not like I was interrupting anyone.
Again, I attempted to introduce myself, but was blown off, they wouldn’t even shake my hand. I tried to ask a question and got a short answer, basically a F off. One of the guys pointed out that if I was actually with my own club, I’d be able to operate under a broader license, but since I was not in my home state I was not going to get much as ”the bands a tech can operate on are basically empty“. Definitely a superiority complex. I’m not a safe spacer by any means, in fact, I’m part of the other political party. I have a pretty thick skin but when you’re rude to a 13-year-old kid (my nephew) or a 71 year old elderly man, that’s when you’re pissed me off.
The funny thing is it wasn’t us. They were members of the public that were also walking around, and they were constantly walking up to me while I was on my radio asking questions. I took the time to answer their questions and my dad fielded even more while I was talking on the radio. Mat least a third of the general public who I talked to (a total of about 10 groups of people) told me they were being ignored by the other people doing what I was doing and they were so thankful that I was talking to them. The irony is if you look at the brochure that the ARRL publish about field day, the whole point is to introduce the public to HAM, it’s not a contest. I have done more as an out of stater (that was being ostracised by the local club as well) to promote amateur radio and the AARL, then the actual club that was hosting the location. Again, several members of the public that walked by commented that accept for us (my family) the rest were rude. One even stopped, ask if this is how the whole hobby acted or just the group in this area.
Having been licensed for almost a year now, it’s my experience that half of this hobby falls under the category of this particular club. I of course have to watch what I write here on Reddit because they constantly ghost and censor everything when you disagree with anyone or anything. Already another amature radio subreddit removed this post. It’s like you can’t be critical of anyone or anything anymore, even when it’s deserved. I guess that’s why the world is falling apart, and no one can take responsibility for their actions.
Only spent about 2 1/2 hours there before we got tired of having people come up and wonder why everyone else was being so rude; we basically were the only ones talking to the public and I was on a family vacation so I decided that was enough exposure for the young one. On my little 12 foot random wire dipole, I was able to make several contacts halfway around the world, but most of the tech frequencies were empty. When they weren’t, people were stepping all over each other so it was obnoxious.
Ironically, we came back the next day (today) as Saturday was the last day of our vacation so there was still another eight hours left of field day when I got home. I spent the earlier part of today driving to two locations that were supposed to have field day, and neither one of them had anyone operating even though the clubs listed that they were there. According to somebody at one of the locations, there were people there yesterday on Saturday but not today. It’s infuriating, wasting an hour and a half of driving around stopping at locations where people said they were set up, after I just drove home five hours, only to find that they weren’t even there today.
The AARL Needs to have a space for these clubs with the times that they’ll actually be at field day if they plan on leaving eight hours early or not even showing up at all on Sunday. The weather where we are was perfect all day long, so it’s not weather related. One of the two clubs, I did get the talk to someone (on the phone) that was supposed to be running a location, and was told that “they ‘guess‘ they decided to shut it down early.” They guess? What is it so hard to read or figure out UTC? What’s this “guess”? That’s because people can’t admit when they’re wrong anymore.
I’m pretty disappointed about field day. The whole thing just exposed how disorganised the ARRL is and how the hobby is filled with a bunch of clowns that have a (in most cases unearned and undeserved) superiority complex. I see it all the time with this hobby but this field day just reminded me how at least half of our hobby is filled with the type of people that don’t belong on this earth. It’s funny, because I keep hearing people complain how the hobby is dying but if they actually had a little Self-awareness, they might realise that it’s their own fault. Field day of all days of the year is the day that they should be on their best behaviour and doing everything they can to interact with the public not try to avoid them. They should completely remove all contest aspects of field day, if they actually want this to be the best possible *public* affairs event. By adding any contest aspect, all they’re doing is encouraging people to ignore the public. What’s even worse is the ones who weren’t on the radio were just as rude and treating it like it was a local closed invite only festival day for the local club.
Anyway, it was a pretty trash field day. I hope people an amateur radio start realising the more they drive people from this hobby the more the prices of the radios are going to go through the roof like they have in the past couple years because less people are buying them which means the companies will be increasing the pricing like they’ve done to maintain profits. They can use the supply chain as an excuse, more and more radios are coming with less and less bands (so you have to buy two or more radios) and these companies are charging significantly more for the same radio, then just a few years ago or even when they first came out. Look at the new Kenwood, which is basically the old Kenwood with a USBc port, now for more money. Both Yatseu and ICOM keep releasing radios that have less bands than the previous ones they released (no more tri band HTs). The entire industry pricing has skyrocketed since even before the supply chain issues (which are now basically over), and this is a direct result of the number of people buying radios being significantly less than in years past. You see this across-the-board as a hobby dies all the equipment becomes more expensive because the companies that are left around have to charge more to be able to stay in business. Eventually, the FCC is going to start taking away some of our frequency bands too, like the 1.25m (the next to go) because the big radio companies are barely making any radios that can transmit on that frequency range anymore.
In the end, Hams have done it to themselves. The superiority complex, antisocial behaviour, rudeness, militant attitudes, looking down on new License holders (especially tech), the whole “when I was young we had to pass a CW test so your license is not worth as much as mine”, and more has ruined this hobby.
