Welcome to the July edition of the CLARA Current! June was a busy month, with both our license class plus exam session and summer field day. Read on for a summary of what went down as well as what to look forward to in July.
From Bob KØNR
License Class Report –
We had a successful Technician License Class in June, using the Ham Radio School online course supplemented by in-person and Zoom sessions. Five people took the Technician exam on June 15th and all passed! (One of these was not officially part of our class.) Three of our students opted to take an online exam earlier in the week and they all passed, so the net result is 8 new Technician licensees.
Thanks to the CLARA folks that helped make this happen:
Jim KDØMRC, Joyce KØJJW, Brian KF5WCW, Sean KFØIHL, Rich KE5HQK, Rick WA6NUT. Also special thanks to Allen and Robert from the Patriot VE Team for managing the exam session!
Congratulations to our new licensees listed below. Great job!!
KF0QQG - Stephen Greenberg
KF0QVR - Kenneth Tapp
KF0QWR - Katherine O'Connor
KF0QWT - Patricia Barrows
KF0QWU - Jeremiah Williams
KF0QXA - Randall Crawford
KF0QXB - Timothy Shellito
KF0QXC - Danny Smith Jr.From Sean KFØIHL
Summer Field Day Report –
Field day was a great experience this year! Bill NØIET and Doug KØILO provided our main station shacks by way of their campers, so we had comfortable accommodations for the event. Thanks guys!
Our site near the top of Trout Creek Pass served us quite well, with a total of 1764 contacts made in 24 hours. Of those, 1374 were made by our powerhouse CW team (Walt WØCP, Sam W5CU, and Bob WØBV). We also made 276 phone contacts, and 114 digital contacts using FT-8 and FT-4 between our main SSB/digital station and our 6m station.
CW and digital QSOs are worth two points, and phone QSOs are worth one point, leaving us with a total score of 6804 including bonus points for copying the field day bulletin broadcast in CW and using emergency power.
Score tabulations are still making their way to the ARRL (Logs can be submitted through July 23rd), so we will report our ranking in August’s newsletter. Also, a very special thanks to Doug KØILO for providing amazing meals to our members and their partners! Our July 9th meeting will begin with a review of our 2024 Field Day – the fun we had and what we learned. We hope you will join us!
From Rick WA6NUT
July Meeting Agenda –
Field Day, June 22-23, is past, with just fond memories left of the WØCLA operations at the top of Trout Creek Pass – already looking forward to 2025!
Our featured speaker will be Sean Duckett, KFØIHL. Sean is the club’s secretary, and he’s a software engineer by profession. His computer and software expertise have been evident in his work for the club in helping set up our website and groups.io site (he’s also consolidating our Field Day logs for submission to the ARRL).
Sean’s presentation will cover some high-tech areas of amateur radio: Software-Defined Radios (SDR’s – Sean uses a Hermes Lite) and SparkSDR (skimmer software for monitoring FT8 signals across 9+ bands simultaneously). Sean will explain how it all works, with practical tips based on his own experience. You’ll not only gain some good information – you might even be inspired to try out a new mode, some new equipment, or new software.
You won’t want to miss our July 9th meeting! Social time is at 6:00 PM, meeting is at 7:00 PM. Light refreshments will be served. Meetings take place at the Casa Del Rio clubhouse located at 27665 C.R. 313, #24 in Buena Vista.
From Jim KDØMRC
Financial Summary –
We have $1141.57 in the bank. We received a $70 donation from Bob K0NR from sales of his book. No expenses.
Our PayPal account is set up and accepting donations. If you enjoyed Doug’s fantastic cooking at field day and have not yet donated to help cover those costs, please consider a contribution. It’s now easier than ever to help support club activities!
Also of note:
The batteries running the W0LSD repeater are old and no longer working. You may have noticed poor performance for a couple of weeks. For the time being the repeater is being powered by a power supply, but we may want to use CLARA funds to purchase a new battery.
We are hopefully close to getting the ‘Quail’ repeater installed at the Homestake pump station (147.240+ 156.7). I donated medical supplies and training to fulfill a need from their corporate folks for an in-kind donation that serves as ‘rent’ for using the facility.
Thanks for reading this month’s Current. Remember, if you can’t make the monthly meeting in person, you can always join us via Zoom using link provided on the events calendar. In fact, the events calendar is a great way to find out what is going on with CLARA anytime, and glean details like locations of events and Zoom links to virtual meetings, so check it out! Have a great month and we hope to see you all on the 9th! 73 from Brian KF5WCW and the entire CLARA board.