Press release from North Florida Amateur Radio Club
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – The local Alachua County Emergency Management-affiliated ham radio team earned a high ranking in the annual Winter Field Day radio disaster communications exercise held Jan 24-25, 2026, while simultaneously hosting a Training Conference on disaster communications, hosting a team from Marion County. Published scores show the team in the top 6% nationally of their “indoor” (but deployed away from home) category.
The North Florida Amateur Radio Club (https://www.nf4rc.club/) set up four simultaneous powerful transmitters at the Alachua County Emergency Operations Center (EOC) on Hawthorne Road, including one in a travel trailer, and simulated a huge power outage by operating totally from lithium batteries for the 24-hour period. Radio signals zoomed out over shortwave, using voice, old-fashioned Morse Code, and some of the latest digital encodings. Volunteers completed hundreds of radio connections to other competitors across America and beyond…