AND our club meeting at 7 PM on that same Wednesday. I look forward to hearing some opinions expressed at the next meeting on the two items listed above. Last week I read an article where the FCC has a bidding war going on for mid-range spectrum from 3.7 to 4.0 GHz price at the time of the article was $66.4 BILLION, HMM, should we as amateur radio operators be concerned? I’d entertain some emails on this subject and maybe discuss this at the next Eat’n Meet’n or club meeting.
The gang here at the website headquarters hope you all had a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HOPE YOU HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR!
My HEX Beam didn’t survive the ice storm on January 1, 2021
Are you interested in participating in ARES? Do you have time during the winter months to do some online training? During our November meeting, Ernie (WØLTC) gave a brief overview of ARES and other Emergency Communication opportunities such as SkyWARN and Red Cross.
ARES is sponsored by the ARRL and may require additional training depending on the level of participation. Any licensed amateur can participate in ARES radio nets. If you would like to be a bit more involved, consider taking some optional courses for Level 1 participation. Level 1 training involves two optional online courses offered by FEMA. These courses are prerequisites before taking the course offered by ARRL. The ARRL Level 1 course is EC-001, Introduction to Emergency Communications.
In order to take the FEMA courses, you need to get a FEMA ID. The instructions for obtaining a FEMA ID are found at the following link: https://cdp.dhs.gov/FEMASID
Once you have your FEMA ID, you can then take the courses at the FEMA training site. The following link will take you to the online course catalog: https://training.fema.gov/is/crslist.aspx , you can then search for the courses from the catalog main page.
The prerequisites for the ARRL course are the following: IS-100.c- Introduction to Incident Command System (2 hour course) and IS-700.b Introduction to National Incident Management System (3.5 hour course).
Once you have completed the FEMA courses, you can then go to the ARRL site for online training. http://www.arrl.org/online-course-catalog The first course to take is ARRL EC-001 Introduction to Emergency Communications.
If you are interested in Storm Spotting, you can take SkyWARN Spotter training (2 hour course) at the following link: https://www.meted.ucar.edu/training_course.php?id=23
At the October meeting Glenn (K0KER) gave a presentation on Parks On The Air (AKA, POTA), it was very interesting and everyone was very attentive. If you missed the meeting and therefore the information Glenn disseminated, if you contact him I’m pretty sure he would be happy to enlighten you (or go to Parks on The Air web site by clinking here).Send an email to the above address and I’ll forward your request to him.
At the November meeting Glenn informed me he was going to activate a local park, I asked him if he minded if I (Jack [WJ0TM]) came along. After some HEM-HAWING around he agreed. So Thursday (11/19/20) I met Glenn at a Conservation area near the town of Fortuna called Manito Lake.
It took about 20 minutes for us to get set up. Glenn was using a Xiegu G90 HF Amateur Radio on 20 meter with 20 watts of power from a 12Ah LiFePO4 battery. His signal was sent out via a Hustler 20 Meter mobile antenna resonator attached to the receiver hitch on his vehicle. I had the high honor of being his “logger”.
Glenn started calling CQ at five minutes to 1300 hrs (that 1 PM for you non military types) and stopped calling CQ at 1400 hrs (need I spell this out?). In that hour he made 39 contacts. The one contact he made that really made his day was from ALASKA. He also made several contacts from Canada and all across the USA.
BTW, see the blue and white chair in the last picture? That’s me in stealth mode. The weather was blistery with a sustained wind speed of around 15 MPH and gust well over 40 MPH. We had setup behind the parks outhouse to keep out of the wind.
All in all it was a really fun day . . . thanks Glenn for the really neat introduction to mobile HF work. I look forward to doing some mobile work myself . . . SOON!
Well this has been on heck of a year . . . and it is almost over. YA!!!!
Okay, a couple of things happened in the past month or so.
Okay gang, that’s about it for now. Remember if you have anything you would like to see posted here simply send Jack (WJ0TM) an email at the address above.
73
I now know what it is like to have “WRITER’S BLOCK”, I’ve been sitting here for the last 10-15 minutes trying to come up with something to write.
Okay . . . here goes:
Robert (KE0TTL) , being the diligent secretary he is, sent me information about the study session the club conducted, the winner of the Baofeng HT at the testing held in conjunction with the secession, and the emergency simulation held on the 10th. So with out further ado . . .
Members of LOARC hosted a study session on October 3 at the EMA building in Camdenton. There were 4 attendees. Congratulations to Dennis, Don, James and Sheila for passing their technician licenses.
Dennis was the winner of the Baofeng HT. Thanks to all who participated in this event!
Robert (KE0TTL) also sent me an updated members list and I posted it. I’d like to welcome three new member to the club, Steve Eden (K0SRE), Ray Myers (WB0PYF), and Jim Nugent (KE0ZMY), Oh! I almost forgot Steven Bouck formally known as AA4SB is now KD0SB.
There was a bit of excitement on the club repeater on October 10th at 10am. Amateur operators from the Lake area participated in the Missouri Troop “F” Shakeout simulation. The Shakeout was an earthquake simulation at the New Madrid fault. The net opened at 10am and local amateurs were invited to check in and give a damage assessment of their local community. Our local ARES repeater was still down at the time of the simulation, so the drill switched over to the 146.73 club repeater. There were 13 local check-ins along with damage reports for this event. We had check-ins from Benton, Camden, Miller and Morgan Counties. We were part of the Troop “F” simulation that had a total of 76 check-ins. Great job everyone!
Last month I listed some videos I felt was of importance to ALL HAMs. I again listed them below and hope ALL HAMs in the area watch them. These deal with the possibility of the FCC increasing the fee for license to $50. K6UDA outlines the problems. The seconded one is a little long because he is actually in a live feed and is covering many topics. Simply click on them to watch, will open in new tab.;.
2) Live feed covering many topics including FCC fee hike.
3) FCC hike and how to make you opinion heard.
Here are links to two ARRL articles on this subject, again simply click on them to read, will open in new tab;.
Fee Proposal comments
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Don’t forget, if you have information you think would be interesting to not only club members but also HAMs in general, send it to me via email and I’ll post it.
73