The American Radio Relay League is the national association for amateur radio. Since 1933, ARRL has sponsored Field Day each June, where thousands of amateur radio operators take to parks, forest and other remote locations.

The purpose is to practice for emergency situations, but also to have fun and show interested parties what amateur radio is.

The Carbon Amateur Radio Club will once again set up a station in the Penn Forest Township Recreational Park along Route 903 for Field Day, which begins at 2 p.m. Saturday and ends at 5 p.m. Sunday.

The main goal is to contact other amateur stations over the radio. The local club will use its call sign, W3HA, to contact as many other radio stations as possible.

Last year, the club made 168 contacts, representing 33 states, Puerto Rico, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Manitoba. Members contacted the East Coast, the Midwest and California, Arizona, Colorado and Montana.

The club is aiming to beat that record this year, but even if it doesn’t, club members said they will still have fun.

Anyone interested in amateur radio and wants to see it in action is invited to visit. The club will answer any questions.

To become an amateur radio operator, a person must pass a test to become licensed by the Federal Communications Commission. Those who pass will be able to access to radio bands that are primarily used for local communications.

Two additional tests are more advanced and give the operator access to additional radio bands, which allow contacts to be made over greater distances, throughout the United States and Canada, but also Europe, South America and Asia.

Long distance communication is made possible by a layer of charged particles surrounding the Earth, the ionosphere, which reflects or bends the waves so that signals may reach far away stations. The charged particles are the result of solar energy hitting our atmosphere. Solar energy varies over an average 11-year cycle; we are close to the cycle maximum which helps amateur radio communications, but can cause radio blackouts when high energy bursts come our way, a club member explained. These bursts also create auroras, which have recently been seen in the southern United States.

The Carbon Amateur Radio Club was founded in 1948 and has monthly meetings on the third Thursday of each month at the Carbon Emergency Management Agency. Its website is www.carbonamateurradioclub.org.