Welcome to the June edition of the CLARA Current. Field Day is this month. It’s the biggest on-air event of the year and we would love for you to participate! Read on for details about Field Day and more.
From Bob KØNR
License Class & Exam Session
I am happy to report that we completed the Technician / General License Class on Saturday.
Of the 10 students that completed the class, 5 took an exam (or two) along with 6 exam takers who were not part of the class.
Most of the other 5 in the class are planning to take the exam at another session, due to various reasons.
From the exam session (not just the class), the results are 5 new Technicians, 2 new Generals (passing both the Tech and the General exam), and 3 upgrades to General. These are fantastic results. Special congratulations go to CLARA members Kate/K8QWR and Randall/KF0QXA who upgraded to General.
Thanks to Stu/W0STU (Ham Radio School owner) and Marty/WT0Z who helped as instructors and Elmers. Dick/K0RWE also helped out as an Elmer. (Each student had an experienced Elmer assigned to help them.)
The Volunteer Examiner team consisted of Allen/AE0KY (Session Leader from the Patriot VE Team), Joyce/K0JJW, Bob/K0NR, Dick/K0RWE, Marty/WT0Z, and Sean/W0XC. Thanks to them also.
Field Day
Our Field Day plan has been published on groups.io (https://groups.io/g/Chaffee-Lake-ARA/topic/clara_field_day_plans_june/119245048) if you want to see the details.
This plan is in draft form and will continue to evolve, with updates via the CLARA groups.io.
The general ARRL website for Field Day is here: https://www.arrl.org/field-day
Here’s the latest schedule. Note that Mike/KE0PWR has signed up a series of educational activities on Saturday afternoon.
| Wed/Thurs | |||
| Time | Activity | Lead | Notes |
| Any | Claim campsite | Site Acquisition Manager | Set up tents/RVs to claim our usual spot near Trout Creek Pass |
| Friday June 26 | |||
| Time | Activity | Lead | Notes |
| 1:00 PM | Setup Field Day Stations | Station managers | |
| 7:00 PM | Finish Setup | ||
| Saturday June 27 | |||
| Time | Activity | Lead | Notes |
| 10:00 AM | Final checkout of stations | Station Managers | |
| Noon | Begin FD radio operations | ||
| Education Program | |||
| Time | Title | Presenter | Description |
| Noon to 1pm | WinLink 101 | Mike KE0PWR | Demonstration and discussion on using WinLink for disaster response. This includes most likely Incident Command System (ICS) forms and map enabled content. |
| 2pm to 3pm | Satellite communications | Matt KG0AT | How to make a contact via FM repeaters like the ISS: -Equipment basics to get started -More advanced options |
| 3 pm to 3:30 pm | National Traffic System (NTS) and the Radiogram | Sam W5CU | Overview of the National Traffic System (NTS) and the Radiogram. |
| 3:30 pm to 4pm | How to be a Fox | Tom W9TR | Tom covers the basics of being a “fox” in a fox hunt. Learn the ins and outs of being a crafty fox in this educational and fun session. |
| 4 pm to 5 pm | WinLink Demos | Mike KE0PWR | Ad hoc WinLink demonstration: -Map generation from requested data -Types of data requests |
| 6:00 PM | Dinner | Executive Chef | |
| Sunday June 28 | |||
| Time | Activity | Lead | Notes |
| Noon | Tear down stations and site | ||
Why Should I Go To Field Day?
I know some of you have never attended Field Day and may wonder what’s all the fuss?
There are lots of reasons to be there and it will vary with the individual. Let me give you a few things to consider:
1. Field Day is the biggest ham radio event in North America. Last year, 31,919 participants made about 1.2 million contacts. There were 4,373 entries from clubs, informal groups, and individuals. So there will be lots of radio activity that weekend.
2. Field Day lets you see how a portable station gets set up in the field. We will be setting up three stations (including a VHF station). You are welcome to come out Friday night and help set up.
3. Field Day is a great event to meet other club members, while we are working together to participate in the event.
4. We will have a BBQ dinner on Saturday night, served up by Executive Chef Doug/K0ILO and helpers.
5. We will be at a dispersed camping area in the San Isabel National Forest, right off Trout Creek Pass. The radio stations will be set up in RVs and there will be plenty of camping spots for your tent or RV. So come out and camp with the group.
6. You can get on the air using one of the stations we’ve set up. Experienced hams will coach you on how to make contacts. (If that is too scary, you can always just watch and learn.)
7. See the educational activities on Saturday afternoon.
8. Feel free to stop in for just an hour or two. Or stay the entire weekend.
73, Bob
From Rick WA6NUT
No Monthly Meeting in June
Just a reminder – CLARA meets on alternate months, so there’s no Tuesday evening CLARA meeting in June. But don’t forget ARRL Field Day (Saturday and Sunday, June 27-28) See details of Field Day elsewhere in this Newsletter.
Our next CLARA meeting will be Tuesday, July 14th, with a great presentation on “Making Digital Radio Contacts on HF”, by Anthony Luscre, K8ZT. Plan to be there!
Weekly 2M CLARA Net
You’re welcome to join our weekly CLARA net on the WØLSD repeater Tuesday evenings at 7:30 PM. Our net is informal and a great way to get acquainted with other hams in the valley. And it provides a way to know that your equipment is in good operating shape. The WØLSD repeater transmits on 146.745 MHz and receives -600 kHz offset (146.145 MHz).
The net doesn’t meet on the Tuesday evenings when the club has its monthly meeting at the clubhouse.
From Mike KEØPWR
EmComm Corner – June
May 9th CLARA participated in Operation Crosstalk which was successful on multiple dimensions. First, CLARA had an excellent turnout with six members working as operators and equipment set-up folks at the Emergency Operation Center (EOC) while three others worked us from the field.
Second, and more importantly the exercise served as a solid proof of concept of what we discussed in January of this year with respect to ad hoc nets and “people helping people.” With little advanced notice CLARA members jumped into the exercise and set-up antennas and equipment that would be used to respond to incidents. Similar to Field Day (FD) and Winter Field Day (WFD) Operation Crosstalk provided an opportunity to develop and maintain skills in rapidly setting up ad hoc communication systems to simulate assisting neighbors and public safety professionals should the infrastructure fail.
As FD approaches consider attending one or all of our educational sessions on Saturday 27 June noon to 5:00 pm. We will be covering a variety of interesting topics: WinLink operations and demos, How to make a contact via FM repeaters like the ISS, How to be a fox and the National Traffic System (NTS) and Radiograms. See you there!
Mike KE0PWR
From Marty WTØZ
4-H Update
We are now in our second year of teaching ham radio workshops to 4-H youth in Chaffee and surrounding counties. Our first year focused on ham radio basics, radio demonstrations and operations, getting youth on the air, and building things including wireless morse code kits, walkie-talkie kits, and fox hunt antennas along with a fox hunt.
This year we added basic electronics workshops and run ham radio and basic electronics in somewhat of a blended manner to show how ham radio is enabled by electronics. Basic electronics workshops include teaching theory, active and passive components, and semi-conductor devices including transistors and soon Integrated Circuits (ICs). We are also breadboarding circuits that correspond to lessons such as basic LED circuits, capacitor delayed-on and delayed-off LED circuits, transistor-controlled LED and buzzer circuits and many others.
One of our lessons learned is to keep the teaching part of each workshop to about 20 minutes maximum and quickly follow it with demonstrations and/or hands-on building something, and/or an interesting activity. That is easy for the things we’ve been doing with ham radio, such as shown in the following photos of May’s Fox Hunt using directional antennas that the 4-H youth built and a “Fox” transmitter that we built using grant funding from the Central Colorado Humanists (CCH) and a radio from CLARA.
For basic electronics, we felt something more is needed than just building a circuit and having it light an LED or activating a buzzer to keep youth interest strong. To aide in this, and to create a visual experience that shows what circuits are doing “on the inside”, we purchased an oscilloscope/function generator using grant money received from the ARRL. The scope is a 125 MHz digital 4-channel Rigol DH0914s and is shown in the following photo:
We plan to start using it in our basic electronics June workshop.
And this photo shows an upcoming basic electronics workshop project. The circuit is a transistor/capacitor controlled delayed buzzer activator.
Bill Sample and I are the CLARA members involved. We have four regular 4-H youth and two occasional youth attendees. Ages range from 8 to 14 years old. Most should have a project on display at the 4-H Chaffee County Fair at the end of July. Three of the 4-H youth are studying for the FCC Technician License exam and hope to take the exam soon. We are also working with Colorado State University (CSU) to initially take what we’ve been doing for basic electronics in Chaffee County and make it available to 4-H groups across Colorado. CSU is also interested in doing this as well for our ham radio work, as we are still the only 4-H group in the state doing ham radio – but that’s for another upcoming CLARA article!
From Doug KØILO
Secretary Report – May BoD
The meeting was called to order by President Bob Witte K0NR at 7:00 pm. All board members Brian KF5WCW, Rick WA6NUT, Jim KD0MRC, Doug K0ILO were present along with Mike McHargue KE0PWR. Jim reported that CLARA has $2305 total assets. Rick reported that Anthony Luscre would make a presentation on Making Digital contacts at the July club meeting.
The Technician Class is in the home stretch with 12 participants including 4-H kids. Bob also reported that the Radio Trek went well but there were only 2 hams, Brian and Tom, participating in the event. Preparation for Field Day is going well. Mike McHargue reported a good turnout at EOC for the NVIS exercise “Operation Crosstalk”. Even with the short notice, we had half-a-dozen members participate.
Marty WT0Z said that the 4-H kids had done a fox hunt and that the grant mentioned in last month’s board minutes from the ARRL., had been received. He is going to order an oscilloscope/signal generator for the 4-H workshops. He will also order a fox hunt transmitter. Marty was interviewed on KHEN about 4-H involvement in amateur radio.
The Monarch repeater should be accessible very soon. There was a discussion about what should be done to get the Monarch (and other club repeaters) working properly. There was also a discussion about the gateway antenna. Jim will donate an antenna mount. The board discussed the calendar for the rest of the year. Bob mentioned the Colorado Mountaintop Event to be held the first weekend in August. Bob will organize group SOTA activation of Monarch Crest for Saturday August 1. Hams can show their license and receive a discount to ride the tram to the top of Monarch Crest. The tram runs daily through sometime in October.
Bob adjourned the meeting at 8:01 pm.
From Jim KDØMRC
Finance Report
We have $1905.42 in checking and $460.42 in PayPal for a total of $2365.73. Please consider paying dues if you haven’t already. Paying dues helps support CLARA activities and maintenance to CLARA assets like repeaters and other stations.
You can pay dues at a meeting, by mail (Jim Willut; 18133 Ponderosa Ln; BV 81211) or by PayPal on the Website. If you use PayPal, please be sure to note the payment is for dues and please pay the transaction fee. You don’t need to pay dues to be a member, but in order to vote or check out gear you need to have paid your annual dues. Dues also support events and educational classes. Thanks for supporting CLARA!
Thanks to everyone for being a part of CLARA. See you at Field Day 2026! 73, KF5WCW