The Tehachapi Amateur Radio Association, AC6EE, is calling the event the inaugural Wintertide Disaster Outreach. This year’s exercise on January 24th is combining all the basics of this important amateur-radio preparedness drill with roles for the public safety and disaster response agencies that they customarily work with during crises. That means the Salvation Army, local search and rescue and representatives from the city of Tehachapi will be among those on hand.

The group’s Field Day coordinator Theresa Scott, W5ILP, and its public affairs officer, Micah Martin, KN6VUT, told the Tehachapi News that including the community partners simply made sense this year since they are part of the realtime response team with the hams when calamity strikes.

The group is also hoping that bringing this expanded public visibility to Winter Field Day might also inspire more people, including spectators who come to learn more, to pursue their amateur radio licenses.

Micah told the newspaper that the Winter Field Day Association, which supports this exercise every January, was not aware of any other Winter Field Day events that had planned such a wide-ranging involvement this year.

It’s being done for a good purpose, according to Theresa, who told the newspaper [quote]: “We really want to encourage people to get on board with this…It can be a lifesaving tool.” [endquote]