[nrv-hams] ARRL Sections for Field Day

[Kay Craigie]

Carter N3AO and I won't be able to attend Field Day this year but hope
everybody has fun and that everybody who wants to get on the air can do it.

If you're new to Field Day, you may wonder what the exchange is all about.
The exchange is what you send to the other station and must log at your
station.

At Field Day, the exchange indicates the maximum number of simultaneously
transmitted signals, the category of the operation (more about that in a
minute), and the ARRL or RAC Section.

Number of simultaneous signals: If the Field Day group has (say) 5 signals
on the air at any one time, then the number you send is 5. That's true even
if you don't have all 5 stations on the air the whole time. 

Category: The category is a letter A through F. NVARC operates in category A
which is club or non-club portable. Class B is one- or two-person portable.
Class C is mobile. Class D is home station, commercial power. Class E is
home station, emergency power. Class F is stations located at emergency
operations centers.

ARRL or RAC Section: Sections are ARRL or Radio Association of Canada (RAC)
administrative units.  The ARRL Section for NRVARC is Virginia (VA on CW and
digital). Most ARRL Sections are states, but some are not. Some states and
provinces have more than one Section (Pennsylvania has Eastern PA and
Western PA, for example). Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands are not
states but they are Sections. To help you prepare your mind to log the
Sections, there's a chart of the Sections and their official abbreviations
at http://www.arrl.org/section-abbreviations. Logging programs usually won't
accept anything other than the standard abbreviation. 

So if we had as many as 4 stations on the air simultaneously at some point,
NRVARC's exchange would be: 4A Virginia.

You might ask why Canadian Sections are mixed up in the ARRL's Field Day?
Until the late 1980s, there was an organization called the Canadian Radio
Relay League. CRRL was the national association for amateur radio in Canada
but was also the Canadian Division of the ARRL. Having their national
association be something of an appendage to the USA's society didn't set
well with a lot of proud Canadian hams, and a rival national organization
was formed. Given how few hams there are in Canada to begin with and the
harm done by all the divisiveness, it was agreed that the CRRL would spin
off from the ARRL and that the CRRL and the rival group would merge. That
led to formation of the RAC. Since Canadian Sections had always been part of
Field Day and some other ARRL operating events, nobody saw a reason to start
excluding Canadian operations. We're good neighbors, eh?

Enjoy Field Day!

73, Kay N3KN