Welcome to the December edition of the CLARA Current! Snow is on the ground and the holidays are upon us. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Read on to find out what’s going on through the end of the year and beyond!
From Bob KØNR
Congratulations to everyone that participated in the Fox Hunt and the
antenna building workshop. I was there for the antenna construction but
was not able to attend the actual fox hunt. I hope we can do that again
soon. I also want to recognize Tom W9TR for organizing this and making
it happen. This is something that he dreamed up and organized the whole
thing for the radio club. Other people joined in and helped out, too.
This kind of volunteerism is very helpful in a radio club, especially a small one like CLARA. I’d like to challenge all of you to think about how you can assist with club activities. It doesn’t have to be a big project but everyone has skills and knowledge they can contribute. For example, right now we could use some help with maintaining and improving the w0cla.org website. Another example is helping out with Winter Field
Day, coming up in January, followed by “real” Field Day in June. Or maybe there is something you’d like to see happen that we haven’t thought about yet. Please give this some thought and let Brian or me know.
From Rick WA6NUT
Our featured speaker will be Bob Witte, KØNR. Bob is the club’s VP, and is well-known as a blogger (The KØNR Radio Site, www.k0nr.com) and author of books for both engineering professionals (including Spectrum and Network Measurements and Electronic Test Instruments: Analog and Digital Measurements), and amateurs (VHF, Summits, and More: Having Fun with Ham Radio).
Bob’s presentation will cover topics like:
- Basic elements of the station (transceiver, power supply, coax, antenna)
- Common transceivers
- Power supplies
- Antenna choices: lots of them!
- Dealing with HOAs, low profile antennas
Plus we’ll have time to discuss any questions you might have for setting up an HF station, with input from Bob and other club members.
You’re invited to our December 10th meeting! Social hour starts at 6:00 PM, meeting is at 7:00 PM. Light refreshments will be served.
To join our meeting Tuesday evening by Zoom, click HERE! The passcode is 7373
From Jim KDØMRC
Our checking account has $1160 and PayPal has $59.
Thanks to Tom KF0ECY and Norm KD0RDD for help installing the repeater at the Otero/Homestake pumpstation north of BV. It is 147.240+ 156.7. It currently IDs as N0ZSN, which will be changed to W0CLA. The range is a bit less than expected, We’ll check the duplexer tuning. Give it a try.
From Sean KFØIHL
We’re having an election for CLARA Board of Directors at the January membership meeting. The current board is running for reelection, and if anyone is interested, we’ll also take nominations from the membership. Please contact any of us if you have questions or interest.
That’s it for this edition of the CLARA Current. We really hope you will join us this Tuesday for our monthly meeting! Aside from a great presentation from KØNR, we will begin discussing winter field day and some other events that we hope to make regular occurrences. One last item to note is that the KDØMRC repeater which usually dons Monarch Mountain Ski Area is not operational at this time. We hope to have it fixed and back in operation soon, but the repairs are still forthcoming. 73 from me, KF5WCW and the entire CLARA board!