ARRL Field Day 2026 at Pleasantdale Park

Two DeKalb ARES operators at a picnic table under tree cover, working an HF station with a laptop logging program, a transceiver and power supply, and a boom microphone, with a green equipment tote on the bench. — DeKalb ARES / Alford Memorial Radio Club

DeKalb ARES joined the Alford Memorial Radio Club for ARRL Field Day 2026 at Pleasantdale Park, a 24-hour emergency-power operating event that doubles as our biggest annual exercise in setting up and running stations off the grid.

DeKalb ARES operated ARRL Field Day 2026 alongside the Alford Memorial Radio Club (AMRC) at Pleasantdale Park in DeKalb County, running from 1800 UTC Saturday, June 27 through 2059 UTC Sunday, June 28. Members helped raise antennas, stand up stations on generator and battery power, make contacts across HF and VHF, and tear it all back down inside the 24-hour window. A Saturday-evening potluck dinner brought operators and families together between operating shifts.

What Field Day is

ARRL Field Day is held every year on the fourth full weekend of June, beginning at 1800 UTC Saturday and ending at 2059 UTC Sunday. It is the single largest on-the-air event in amateur radio: in 2025, more than 4,300 clubs, groups, and individuals across the US and Canada took part, with nearly 32,000 operators logging over 1.2 million contacts in 24 hours.

Field Day is officially an operating event rather than a contest. The point is to get stations on the air quickly under field conditions, using emergency power, temporary antennas, and whatever site you can set up on, and to do it as a team.

Why it matters for ARES

For an emergency-communications group, Field Day is the closest thing to a full dress rehearsal we run all year. When a real activation comes, we may have to operate from a parking lot, a fire station, or an EOC, on generator or battery, with antennas thrown up on short notice and no commercial power or internet to fall back on. Field Day exercises exactly those skills:

Deploying and powering stations away from a fixed shack, on generator and battery.
Putting up temporary HF and VHF antennas and getting them working.
Operating as a coordinated team across multiple stations and shifts.
Introducing the public and served agencies to what amateur radio can do when other systems are down.

Working a few hours of Field Day each June is one of the best ways for DeKalb ARES members to keep their go-kits, antennas, and operating habits sharp for the next real event.

Thanks to everyone who came out, to the Alford Memorial Radio Club for hosting alongside us, and to the families who kept the potluck table full. More photos from the weekend are in the AMRC photo album at https://alfordmemorialradioclub.groups.io/g/main/album?id=310371. For general background on the event, see the ARRL Field Day page at https://www.arrl.org/FIELD-DAY.

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