In the parking lot and front driveway of the Culver City Fire Department Station No. 1, local amateur radio operators spent the weekend of June 28-29 practicing and informing the interested about their unique yet life-saving hobby.
Culver City’s ham radio operators, also known as “hams,” have been working for years with the Culver City Fire Department to ensure that there will never be a communications blackout in Culver City in case of an emergency such as a natural disaster.
“The resource that we have in Culver City is pretty great because we have great city support. We will be here 24 hours and they allow us to do that which is great,” Alan Corlin Amateur Radio Operator said. “The amount of money that the city has spent on CCARES (Culver City Amateur Radio Emergency Services) while not being an egregious amount has been enough to support this group and allow this to grow.”
CCARES members personally their own equipment and with their licenses and skill set are a valuable resource to the city in case a natu- ral disaster takes out antennas or satellite signals which provide for phone and other types of technical communications. “In an emergency you will always hear the same thing: a ham operator reported,” Corlin said. “In times of emergency ham radios is the only way of communication you an count on. Cell phones will be no good and landlines will be no good.”
Culver City’s Field Day was part of the Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL) effort to educate the general public about “ham” radios. During that 24-hour period “hams” across the countr y hosted similar public demonstrations in which calls were sent out to dem- onstrate each groups and individual’s emergency communication abilities.
“It is not strictly a contest since there are no prizes but you do keep track of all the contacts that you make,” Amateur Radio Operator John Cantrell said. “There is a format that we have where if we hear someone throw a call out, we throw out our call but we use pho- netics since on the band there is a lot of noise. There is a program that we use that keeps tracks of the contacts that we make and you are not allowed to track calls twice. It’s like electronic fishing: you throw your call out and see who responds; or you can listen for other people to throw their call out and you respond to them.”
“If you have a child that is eight or nine years old, that is when they start getting into electronics,” Corlin said. “You can throw a game at them and they will have something to do by themselves or with their buddies and the parents are locked out. Ham radio is something where both parent and child can learn about it, both can take the test and do something together.”
