Winter Field Day 2016

On January 13^th & 14^th, 2007, the airwaves came alive with the QSO’s of the very first ever SPAR Winter Field Day.

Winter Field Day came about because many hams realized that we needed a method of testing ourselves for winter emergencies.  It’s not only during the warm months that disasters and emergencies happen, so why don’t we practice in the cold months…….frigid winds, icy limbs and bitter cold simply replace the thunderstorms and blistering heat of summer.

Over the past four years SPAR has actually accomplished very little, the five members of the Board of Directors are all getting up there in age, and have admitted that they are not in the best of health.  The silly thing here is that when the SPAR Bylaws were first written they do not allow for new Board members to be elected, the current five members are it, and are “there for life”.

Just before Winter Field Day 2015, Walt, W5ALT, who had actually been doing all of the work and was the “face” of SPAR suffered a very big stroke.  Of course nobody in SPAR knew this until people started trying to upload their logs and the website wouldn't let them do it.

Around the end of February, Charlie, KY5U, another board member appeared on the website for the first time in a very long time, and advised everyone that Walt had had a major stroke, and asked everyone to re-submit their logs to him for scoring.  Well, the re-submitted logs have never been seen again and no results have ever been posted.  Most of us figured this was going to happen as SPAR has been operating by accident for a long time.

Several individuals decided that Winter Field Day just had to be saved, and given the current state of the SPAR Board members health wise, it would be prudent to form a new association to take over the running of Winter Field Day, and they have done just that.The new Winter Field Day Association website can be found HERE. And you can all pencil in January 30^th & 31^st 2016........that’s the next Winter Field Day.

There is also a Facebook page, available HERE.