a field organization of the National Association for Amateur Radio®
Radio clubs
The Barnstable Amateur Radio Club had a presence for the second year at the Harwich Cranberry Arts & Music Festival on September 15, 2018 from 10 AM – 6 PM. The festival featured food trucks, music, community and vendor tables, and a bicycle event.
According to BARC organizers, “excellent weather and band condition made for a good weekend.”
The Sturdy Memorial Hospital ARC ARES team will conduct a drill on Sunday, September 30, 2018. They will meet after breakfast at Sturdy Memorial Hospital at 10:30 AM. The drill will last for approximately an hour and a half.
“We should be home in time for 1:00 PM kickoff of the Pat-Dolphins game.”
The Harvard Wireless Club will participate in the Harvard Student Involvement Fair on Friday, September 7, 2018 at Tercentenary Theater in Harvard Yard, Cambridge.
“We will be at Table 719. Just look for the Alex Loop antenna on the 19-foot tripod, which is usually the tallest thing at the fair,” remarks W1AF station manager Bill Collins, W1PL. Bill is requesting HWC members come by and help recruit new people. The crew will conduct talk-in on the MIT repeater, 449.725/444.725 -, PL 114.8.
The first meeting of the Harvard Wireless Club will be held on Tuesday, September 11 at 6 PM. Adds W1PL, “We will have free pizza. Hopefully, new recruits will be there.”
Matt Chao, N1IBB, writes on the Middlesex ARC list:
Now that summer’s officially gone (Labor Day), it’s time to resume our activities for the rest of the year. The first session of the Zola Net for the other three seasons will be starting up tomorrow at 7 PM on the Newton repeater (147.360, PL of 67 Hz. The purpose of the Net is to give both new and experienced hams the opportunity to participate in a controlled Net environment. The Net usually lasts for about half an hour.
Looking forward to hearing all of you on the Net tomorrow, weather permitting. (T-storms are forecast for tomorrow as a cold front comes through).
Larry Gray, W1IZZ, writes on the Falmouth ARA web site:
“Brian, W1HXN, has started a 6 meter net on the N1YHS 6M repeater in Barnstable. The repeater operates at 50 watts and is located in Barnstable village by the courthouse complex. The repeater is on 53.010, – 1MHz offset, PL tone is 173.8. The time-out timer is set for 180 seconds.
“Brian set a date of 8/29/18 @ 7:00 pm as the 1st meeting of the 6M net. If you need to check your equipment before that time, Brian will try to monitor the repeater as much as he can. Thank everyone for showing an interest. It is an open net, so everyone is welcome to check-in.”
Eric Williams, KV1J, Marlborough EMA Communications Officer writes in the Algonquin ARC QRZ newsletter:
Please join us as we support the biannual joint Hudson-Marlborough Household Hazardous Waste Collection Day on September 29th .
Our support is a combined effort by our Algonquin Amateur Radio Club and the Marlborough Emergency Management Team. Using our radio communications skills, we manage the traffic flow and validate residency for the approximately 400 cars that come to the event. We use both our N1EM repeater and the Emergency Management’s UHF radios.
We setup at 8 AM and the event runs from 9 AM to 1 PM. The event is next to the Marlborough Resident Drop-Off Facility, located at 860 Boston Post Road East in Marlborough, behind the Half Way Café near Home Depot. I will send out an email reminder before the event. Event Flyer from the Marlborough City web: https://www.marlboroughma.gov/sites/marlboroughma/files/uploads/household_hazardous_waste_fall_2018.pdf.
Jack Buckley, W1AKN writes in the Genesis ARS Newsletter:
Joe Costa, KC1ECK, writes in the Genesis ARS Newsletter:
The Paul Tura (N1KFD) Memorial Fox Hunt is scheduled for Saturday, September 15th at the GARS Meeting Room at the Plymouth Airport.
This is the day of the GARS breakfast also. Come for breakfast or the fox hunt or both! Breakfast is 9:00 AM at Kevins restaurant. We will start the hunt at 10:30 AM +/-.
The Algonquin Amateur Radio Association is looking for volunteers to assist in the Marlborough Labor Day parade on September 3. The parade is one of the club’s highest profile public service events.
According to AARC’s Ed Fitzgerald, K1DIN, “The early recruiting for this year’s parade and the great response may give us the opportunity to try some operational upgrades. Each year that we’ve filled our roster, we have made some changes which seem to have worked well.”
Jim Babish, K1UUM, has agreed to assist Ed as his assistant team organizer “so that he might learn all the steps to getting the parade team ready.” Says K1DIN: “Of similar importance, we need to continually ‘deepen our bench’ so that in years when some of our volunteers have other commitments for parade day, we still can have complete coverage… We have a few experienced volunteers who have been able to fill in for folks who have last minute emergencies, for which I will be forever grateful.”
Those wishing to volunteer should contact K1DIN at: edfitz1@earthlink.net.
The South Eastern Massachusetts Amateur Radio Association (SEMARA) will host a presentation entitled Contest College @ SEMARA on September 9, 2018 at approximately 12 PM.
The Framingham Amateur Radio Association‘s recent Field Day operation at the McAuliffe Library was featured on Framingham’s community access channel accessfram.tv. According to FARA’s Glenn Axelrod, KC1HPZ, the coverage “is expected to be part of Access Framingham’s ‘Framingham Beat’ news magazine show at 7:30 PM on August 2.”
“Sumner, W1VIV, was featured prominently… his explanation of Field Day became the narration for the video that KC1HPZ shot and AFTV’s staff edited.”
Access Framingham can be viewed on RCN 3, Comcast 9, or Verizon 43. It can also be live-streamed on the web at accessfram.tv/watch.
UPDATE: the program can also be found on YouTube: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZjHmHfIP90>.
Members of the Whitman Amateur Radio Club have been working to develop a mesh network using commercial internet wireless routers.
WARC President Joe Amorelli, K1JMA, has acquired a number of Linksys routers for members to use.
“Club members interested in a Linksys router and volunteering for Mesh Networking experimentation, please see me,” said Joe.
The Massachusetts Maritime Academy Radio Club has been granted ARRL Affiliation status.
In a letter dated July 31, 2018 from ARRL’s Norm Fusaro, W3IZ, Field Services and Radiosport Department Manager to MMAARC club trustee Andrew Perron, AB1YN, Fusaro writes: “It gives me great pleasure to advise you that the ARRL has approved your club’s application for affiliation with the ARRL. The Massachusetts Maritime Academy Radio Club is hereby declared a duly affiliated society.”
The League will generate a “handsome” charter and send to the club in the near future.
Fusaro added, “Your club is now eligible for the benefits of ARRL affiliation; we hope you will make full use of our services. ”
Congratulations to the officers and members of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy Amateur Radio Club for this important milestone!
The Nashoba Valley ARC participated in a Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation (HamSci) experiment with the Canadian CAScade, Smallsat and Ionospheric Polar Explorer (CASSIOPE) spacecraft over Field Day weekend.
Courtesy the HamSci web site:
“’We’re really happy with our results this year’ remarked Dr. Gareth Perry, a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Calgary, CASSIOPE’s home institution. ‘The Radio Receiver Instrument (RRI) recorded plenty of chatter between Field Day participants, especially during our passes over the eastern and central United States on the evening of the 23rd’.
“Members of the Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation (HamSCI) group coordinated with the Nashoba Valley Amateur Radio Club (NVARC, N1NC) and the Hoosier DX And Contest Club (N9NS) and the Indianapolis Radio Club to ‘direct traffic’ – asking their members to stick to pre-selected frequencies during the passes, and to record their transmitting logs.”
The Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation project is a platform for the publicity and promotion of projects that:
Eric Williams, KV1J, writes on the Algonquin ARC mailing list:
The Algonquin Club will be holding a QSL card sorting session on Thursday August 9th, 7:30 PM at the Marlborough Fire Station. We will be in the classroom/EOC where we hold Field Day.
The Bureau receives QSL cards from DXers all over the world, sort them and then send them to the New England area hams. We processed about 100,000 QSL cards each year. To do this, we are grateful for the team of over 40 volunteers and several area clubs that help make this happen. Our Algonquin club is one of the clubs that helps with the presorting step in our process.
Our part is easy and fun. You get to see QSL cards from all around the globe. Maybe catch a card that is for you! We will have boxes of cards from the country national organizations that are for W1 call area hams. For our session we will have about 13,000 cards. Our mission is to sort those cards into stacks for each first letter of the call sign suffix. So there will be a stack for all the call signs the a suffix the starts with A and one for those starting with B and so forth. It goes quick especially with lots of people doing it on several separate tables.
When we are done, those stacks will be sent to our individual letter sorters who will then sort them by the individual recipient hams.
Our web site is – www.w1qsl.org If you want to see the details of our processes – http://www.w1qsl.org/qslsort/docs.htm
Thank you and hope to see you next month.
73,
Eric, KV1J
W1 QSL Bureau Co-Manager
The Sturdy Memorial Hospital ARC will set up an Amateur Radio display on August 11, 2018 from 9 AM until 1 PM in Kapron Park, 201 County Street in Attleboro. Club members will display ‘Magic Beans’ “as well as other radios and modes of communication that an ham radio operator can use.”
Magic Beans is a homemade, hitch-mounted extendable tower constructed by club members in 2005. You can see additional photos along with a detailed description of Magic Beans on the club’s web site.
July 22, 2018: Due to the inclement weather we won’t be operating the demonstration table at kids day today. I would like to thank everyone who came out and assisted over the past few days.
73,
N1EZT, Pierre
Pierre Guimond, N1EZT, writes on the Sturdy Memorial Hospital ARC mailing list:
Good afternoon Sturdy Radio club members and friends of W1SMH! For those of you who may not be aware, it’s time again for the annual North Attleboro firefighter’s Kid’s Day Festival . It will be held from July 19 through 22 at the North Attleboro Middle/High School complex, 564 Landry Avenue, North Attleboro.
We are going to have a club-sponsored information/demo table with HF, VHF, DMR, SDR (and other modes /information that anyone might like to suggest) set up at NAFF Kid’s Day to advertise our club’s good work, and generate/spawn interest with the kids (and parents too!) for our hobby .
I’m planning a pop up tent, the club sign , a table, chairs , radios, batteries, computers, and at least two or three different portable expedient antennas.
I’ve had some interest from the membership already but I’m reminding you in case you wish participate and provide a small or large block of your time to staff the station. I’m keeping the scheduling as informal as I can.
I won’t be able to staff the station for the most part but l will be able to set up and take down equipment, and provide verbal support to other staffers as I am committed to other functions during this event.
I would like to have staff at the table on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday afternoon from about 1 to 4 p.m. Based on response, we will extend or cut back the time.
This will be good trial run in preparation for the August farmers market in Attleboro, and hopefully a future open house Amateur Radio demo/special event station we are planning in the fall.
Any and all assistance is appreciated but I don’t wish to take staffing away from other activities at the event by radio club members / CERT team members, so I will ask that you keep this in mind if you wish to help out with the information table.
You can respond to me directly by email–until, and even after the event starts–if you can help out. I am grateful for any assistance you might be able to provide for this effort.
Thank you for your consideration. And thank you in advance for your support and expertise!
Sincerely and 73,
N1EZT, Pierre
SMHARC Member since 1986
n1ezt@yahoo.com
n1ezt2@gmail.com
401-230-5437 c
The Algonquin Amateur Radio Association will conduct its Field Day operation June 23-24 at the Marlborough Emergency Operations Center at the Central Fire Station, 215 Maple St, Marlborough. The group will operate three stations–possibly four–in the “F” Category (Emergency Operations Center).
Update: June 21, 2018:
David “Shack” Haralambou, W1SHK writes on the Algonquin ARC mailing list:
Here are the plans for Field Day at this moment:
I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible this weekend!
Waltham Amateur Radio Association posts on its web site:
On Saturday, June 23, 2018, WARA will combine a club picnic and a four-hour operation in the ARRL Field Day.
Time: 12:00 – 6:00 PM
Location: Sunset Shelter, Prospect Hill Park, Waltham (near the repeater site)
The club provides hamburgers, hot dogs, buns, condiments, and water. Attendees may optionally bring other food items to share.
The FD operation is very laid back, and everyone is welcome to operate.
