A new year has arrived and 2025 looks to be an exciting year for Ham Radio here in George County. Starting the new year off with a “BANG” was the “Big Freeze and Snow of 2025” with some parts of our area down to Coastal Mississippi receiving up to nine inches of snow, while here at the Dailey Compound we accumulated over 4 inches with low temperatures around 10 degrees. I haven’t seen snow fall like this since I was a teenager while living in Wyoming. With bridges, highways, streets, towns and cities grinding to a stop along with work closures for days, January 2025 will be a date to remember for sure.

George County A.R.E.S. December's 14th Christmas will be located at the Lucedale Public Library 507 E. Oak St in the hospitality room starting at 9:00 AM.

Mississippi Simulated Emergency Test (SET) 2024

OPERATIONS ORDER:

On Saturday, August 10th, 2024, from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM, the MS Section of ARES will conduct a statewide exercise titled "Wildfire Heatwave SET."

Field Day is ham radio's open house. Every June, more than 40,000 hams throughout North America set up temporary transmitting stations in public places to demonstrate ham radio's science, skill and service to our communities and our nation. It combines public service, emergency preparedness, community outreach, and technical skills all in a single event. Field Day has been an annual event since 1933, and remains the most popular event in ham radio.

The 2023 George County ARES Christmas Party will be held on December 9, 2023.

Christmas will be located at the Lucedale Public Library 507 E. Oak St in the hospitality room starting at 9am.

Our Christmas meeting/lunch is a great opportunity to invite your friends, family, hams and non-hams so everyone can join us for a good time of Fun, Food and Fellowship. If it's been a long time or you've never joined us for a meeting We want to send each of you a special invitation to attend.

In place of our typical monthly program we will have a few interactive programs including "Ham Radio Password".

This year's meeting is a Pot-Luck brunch type menu and we are asking for a few folks to volunteer to bring items, GC ARES will provide the ham and turkey. For those who are able to volunteer to bring items please contact General Dailey, KD4VVZ to coordinate. As much as we love Apple Pie, we wouldn't want to have 30 of them. We also realize that not everyone can commit to bringing items, and that's just perfectly fine, please attend anyway, we want EVERYONE to attend and have a great time.

The George County Mississippi Amateur Radion Emergency Service (A.R.E.S) Group will be hosting the "Scratching Post" QSL Party in the Lucedale City Park on Saturday October 7, 2023 from 1100 to 2300 UTC (6:00 AM to 6:00 PM CDT).

We will be operating under the Special Event Callsign of K5K.

This event is to honor Lucedale's famous Scratching Post and the objective of this event is to promote the Amateur Radio hobby in our area and to allow anyone wishing to participate and gain some ham radio experience. 

There will be a custom designed Special Event QSL Card, which will be a unique collector’s item and this Special Event QSL card will be exchanged with fellow operators who make contact with us during this Special Event.

This is a FREE event, open to the public, so we hope everyone can come out and join us for this Special Event and learn what amateur radio is all about!

For more information on this event, contact Bob Barber: (601) 766-5653 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

For more information about Amateur Radio contact the Ham Radio Hotline: (601) 530-0055 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

We Want You To Be A Part Of It!

What is ARRL Field Day?

The short answer is Field Day is ham radio's open house.

You're Invited!

Field Day is a radio communications event that brings together amateur radio operators (also called “hams”) within your community. The event is part picnic, campout, practice for emergencies, informal contest, and most of all, fun! ARRL Field Day is the most popular ham radio activity held annually in the US and Canada. On the fourth weekend in June each year, more than 35,000 radio amateurs get together with their clubs, groups, or friends to operate from remote locations.

It is a time when many aspects of amateur radio come together to highlight its many roles. While some will treat it as a contest, other groups use the opportunity to practice their emergency response capabilities. It is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate radio communications to the general public and organizations that amateur radio might serve in an emergency. For many radio clubs, ARRL Field Day is one of the highlights on their annual calendar.

The contest part involves contacting as many other stations as possible while learning to operate radio gear in abnormal situations and less than optimal conditions.

These same skills are utilized to help with large, preplanned, non-emergency events such as marathons and bike-a-thons; fundraisers such as walk-a-thons; celebrations such as parades, and exhibits at fairs, malls, and museums.

Despite the development of very complex, modern communications systems — or maybe because they are so complex — ham radio has been called into action, again and again, to provide communications in crises when it really matters. Hams are well-known for their communications support in real disaster and post-disaster situations.

A free, weekly, live, Amateur Radio General Class Licensing course on Zoom will begin on Thursday, Oct 27 and will run through Thursday, January 5.

There will be 9 sessions, with two breaks for holidays.

The three-hour sessions will start at 6:30 PM Eastern Time. Sessions will be recorded.

These are the classes that we have been holding for years sponsored by the National Electronics Museum.

Please publicize this with anyone that you think would be interested. Those wishing to sign up should email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..