Three Field Day ideas

This has more to do with Public Relations than the technical aspect of Field Day. You may want to consider these for your Field Day effort if you set up in a public setting with the intention of talking up Amateur Radio. These are a few new ideas that we (SPARC) came up with for our 2019 outing.

Guest book - I don't know why we haven't thought of this before! We will have a guest book by our public information table/display. It's useful for keeping track of guest operators, but also for anyone from the general public who has come by and shown interest in our hobby. Space for name and e-mail is probably sufficient - some people get uncomfortable with leaving too much personal information

Posters - We decided to purchase a pack or two of these from the ARRL:

We' will add the necessary info in the blank box, and we're hoping that the local merchants around town will be so kind as to display these in their windows or bulletin boards.

Signs - In addition to our club banner, we had some small signs/banners printed up by VistaPrint during one of their many on-line sales. It is a series of 1.5 X 3 foot signs that we will display in front of or close to important areas of our Field Day site.  We felt that these would be good to explain to people what is going on that may be too shy to actually come up and ask any of us about what's going on.

For example, one will say "Solar Power - we use this solar panel to charge the batteries that power our radios." This will go close to the solar panel.

"Portable tower/antenna - this ladder holds the antenna that we use to communicate around the country and the world." This of course, will be close to the tower, but far away enough to be at a safe distance from it.

We have a few others to go by the communications tent, by the information tent, and so on. We're not certain that these will have any real effect, but they were relatively inexpensive and it's our hope that they will give our Field Day site a more hospitable atmosphere. I know there's nothing like a smile and a handshake to foster that hospitality; but sometimes we're either under-manned for the moment; and sometimes visitors are not ready to "people". Hopefully the signage will fill in those cracks.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!