Hamming it up: Amateur radio operators hold field day in Derry

By James A. Kimble
Staff writer

June 29, 2008 05:53 am

—

DERRY — When a flood knocked out phone and emergency communications in nearby Nottingham in April 2007, Mike Pelletier and his fellow amateur radio operators were there to pitch in.

For 72 hours, they ran emergency communications for the town using their own amateur radio equipment, until the National Guard came in to perform the same service while the town's repairs were underway.

"I like the fact that if there's an emergency, I can do something to help instead of get in the way," said Pelletier, a Derry resident who owns his own appliance service business.

Yesterday, Pelletier was among the hundreds of New Hampshire ham radio operators participating in annual field day activities.

The event is designed to bring together radio enthusiasts to test their equipment and see how handily they can prepare their equipment and contact others. A contest is held among regional radio groups to see who can make the most contacts in a single day.

Pelletier and two cohorts set up their equipment yesterday morning just outside the football field at Pinkerton Academy. He wired his analog and digital radio equipment to a small generator and a 12-volt marine battery.

Behind him, George Moranian used his laptop to communicate with a radio enthusiast from France.

Moranian explained much of the newest radio equipment can be hooked up to a personal computer, allowing users to communicate over the Internet instead of the airwaves. Users can speak to one another digitally in chat-room environments and even send small files to one another.

"I like the technical aspect of it," Moranian said. "Once I get a whole station set up, you can see who you can contact around the world."

Pelletier said there is a large variety of equipment among radio operators, from traditional analog equipment and digital radios to equipment hooked up to laptops, just as there are a variety of ways to communicate.

There's Morse code. Simply chatting over the radio. Or conversing by computer.

Pelletier recalled one colleague in Derry who recently bounced his radio signals off the moon just to see if he could get them across the globe. Now that he has accomplished the feat, his friend is on to other challenges.

"The hobbies are as varied as the people who are in it," he said.

While he enjoys being able to help in an emergency, Pelletier said he also likes working at parades — where lost children are a regular occurrence — and other community events when an extra pair of eyes and ears are handy.

Moranian, a calibration technician from Londonderry, said his job requires him to be on the road constantly, but his radio equipment always gives him someone to talk to while he drives.

"It keeps me company," he said.

Doug Hansel, a spokesman for the American Radio Relay League, estimated that 300 to 400 people throughout the state participated in yesterday's field day activities.

Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.