Happy New Year and welcome to the January edition of the CLARA Current! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season full of peace, joy, and QSOs. We are kicking off the new year with Ham Help, a great presentation from Ed Fong WB6IQN, and Winter Field Day. Read on for details!
From Bob KØNR
Our next Ham Help Workshop will be held Satuarday Jan 11th at 2 pm
Location: Casa Del Rio Clubhouse in Buena Vista, 27665 C.R. 313 #24.
The main topic for this workshop will be Getting On The Air With HF.
This is a follow-on to my presentation at the December club meeting concerning putting together your first HF station. We will put together a simple HF station and demonstrate how to make contacts.
We typically cover these topics, customized to meet the needs of the attendees:
– Guidance and coaching on how to get your ham radio (Technician) license.
– Guidance and coaching on how to upgrade to the General or Extra license.
– Help with making your first VHF/UHF ham radio contact.
– Help with programming your VHF/UHF radio (we program the radios for you).
– Help with learning how to program your VHF/UHF radios using Chirp or similar software.
– Demonstrations of operating a ham radio station (VHF/UHF and HF)
– <other topics by request, as needed>
Registration is not required but it is best to let us know that you are attending along with what you need help with.
Just drop me an email at [email protected]
Happy New Year!!!
From Rick WA6NUT
CLARA January Meeting Notice
When: Tuesday, January 14, 2025 Social: 6:00 PM, Meeting: 7:00 PM
Where: Casa del Rio Clubhouse
27665 CR 313 #24 in BV
VHF/UHF Dual Band J-Pole Antenna – by Ed Fong, WB6IQN
Our guest speaker for the January meeting will be Ed Fong (WB6IQN). As many of you know, he is the inventor of the DBJ-1 and DBJ-2 antenna that was featured in the February 2003 and March 2007 QST. His most recent antenna was the TBJ-1 – a triband base antenna that was published in March 2017 QST. The DBJ-1 is a highly effective dual band VHF/UHF base station antenna and the DBJ-2 is the portable roll up version. The DBJ-2 won the QST Plaque of the Month Award. Both of these antennas are featured in the ARRL VHF antenna Handbook and also in the ARRL Antenna Classic Handbook. There are over 40,000 of these antennas in use today. About half are used by hams and the other half by government and commercial agencies.
Ed will give a history on how these antennas were developed and the theory on how and why they work so well. There is no “black magic” to antennas. He will explain in a non-mathematical manner to convince you for overall performance and simplicity his approach is one of the most practical.
Ed Fong was first licensed in 1968 as WN6IQN. He later upgraded to Extra Class (when 20 WPM was required ) with his present call of WB6IQN. He obtained the BSEE and MSEE degrees from the Univ. of California at Berkeley and his Ph.D. from the Univ. of San Francisco. A Life Senior Member of the IEEE, he has 12 patents and over 40 published papers and books in the area of communications and integrated circuit design. Presently, he is employed by the University of California, Santa Cruz (previously with Berkeley from 1997-2010) as an instructor teaching graduate classes in Antenna Design, RF design and high speed interface.
You’re invited to our January 14th 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 Sean KFØIHL
CLARA will hold its Annual Meeting on January 14th, 2025. At this time,
we will hold elections for the Board of Directors. The current Board
members are up for re-election, and we will also accept any nominations
from the floor. Doors & social hour at 6pm; business begins at 7pm.
On 12/19/2024, the Board of Directors met and voted to approve updates
to the CLARA Bylaws. At a high level, the updates clarify meeting structure (the Annual Meeting is now fixed to January), define levels of membership and how dues are assessed, and clarify how our bylaws are to be updated in the future (2/3 vote of regular
members). The current version of club bylaws, as well as articles of incorporation, can be found at https://w0cla.org/resources/ (direct link: HERE). A paper copy is also included in The official CLARA binder held by the club secretary. The review and editing process required many hours and plenty of discussion. The Board wishes to thank the bylaws committee members: Bob, KØNR; Doug, KØILO; and Sam, W5CU, for their willingness to review and provide feedback on our foundational documents.
From Tom W9TR
Come on out to Field Day 2025!
As the sun sets on 2024 I was thinking of some of the past year’s highlights. Winter Field Day, Summer Field day and Foxhuntng topped the list. I love amateur radio because there are so many different things to do. Winter Field Day was something I hadn’t done before. I had a great time and learned a lot. First, being a newbie it was great getting to know some of the club members a little bit better. The warm food was excellent on a cold winter day. We put up a diploe and a vertical and got two stations on the air in a few hours. We operated all day, making SSB and CW contacts on multiple bands. Bill, N0IET’s camper was warm and comfortable. I even worked a mini POTA pileup through the magic of spotting.
So, please come on out to the W0CLA Winter Field Day! Field Day this year starts at 9:00A Saturday, January 25th and goes through 3:00P Sunday, January 26th. As of this writing we are still looking at some different options for a location, so stay tuned to the club’s groups.io chat for more details as they become available.
Winter Field Day is a great way to learn about setting up a viable station under less-than-ideal circumstances. If you are new to ham radio, it’s a great way to get on the air with a working station with help at hand if you need it. If you are new to CW it’s a great way to make some contacts – the format is simple and easy to copy. If your bag is emergency communications, you’ll get a good feeling for what it takes to function with very little infrastructure in place.
Hope to see you there! Tom, W9TR
From Jim KDØMRC
We had a $163 deposit this month, and have a current balance of $1523.49. We also have $73.99 in our PayPal account. Some of our online services like our website and Zoom account will renew soon, so there will likely be debits in the next month or two.
In the new year, the club will begin collecting annual dues per the updated bylaws. We added a dues requirement for active members not to simply collect more money, but to clearly define who is a voting member and who is not. The amount is not defined in the bylaws and the board has not decided what the annual dues should be as of this writing. The board will decide this after the elections at the January members meeting.
That’s it for this edition of the CLARA Current. Thanks to everyone for being part of CLARA. It has been absolutely wonderful to see the club grow and members become more and more a part of this organization over the past year. I hope we can continue to grow the club in 2025! 73 on behalf of Tom W9TR, myself KF5WCW, and the entire board. We wish you all a very Happy New Year and hope to see you all at the meeting on the 14th!