CLARA Current September 2025

Welcome to the September edition of the CLARA Current. It’s been great to see so many of our members making SOTA activations! Keep up the great work. Also, thanks to our healthy chaser community. Activators need you! Now here’s what’s happening in September and beyond.

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Performer, Challenger, and Dominator Portable HF Antennas by Greg Mihran, KJ6ER with demo by Marty Glapa, WTØZ

Our September meeting will begin with Marty, WTØZ demonstrating his portable vertical HF antenna.  It’s a modified KJ6ER design, and Marty will explain the modifications.

Next, we’ll be joined by the designer of the antenna, Greg Mihran, KJ6ER.  Greg holds an Extra-Class license, lives in Silicon Valley (Campbell, California) and has been operating HF/UHF/VHF since 1987.  He was born in Schenectady, New York, and holds a B.S.E.E. degree from Case Institute of Technology.  After a 45-year career with Silicon Valley tech companies, he retired on June 30, 2022. Greg says that he “appreciate(s) antenna theory,” but that he’s “really a backyard pragmatist.”

In his presentation, he’ll share basic design principles and some high-level antenna fundamentals, with a practical emphasis.  Then he’ll describe actual results with his portable HF antennas.  You’re sure to get some good ideas for your own portable HF operation! Greg provides full details of his antennas with an extensive library of PDF’s available to the ham radio community.

You won’t want to miss this exciting and informative presentation.

You’re invited to our August 12th 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

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Thanks to everyone that came out and participated in the POTA activation!
We were a bit worried about the storms moving through the area but they missed us with plenty of safety margin. We used the large ‘group’ picnic area on the north side of the loop. In attendance were:

Russ NØRCG, Mike KEØPWR, Dick KØREW, Kate K8QWR, Steve K5SJC, Sean WØXC, Ed NYØD, Bob KØNR

We set up my Yaesu FT-911 driving an end-fed random wire antenna supported by a 10m mast. There was quite a bit of interest in FT8, so we set that up first, in case the storms shut us down. I had the opportunity to demonstrate fumbling around with Windows drivers, comm ports and WSJT-X settings to make it work. The FT-8 contacts were on the 17m band.

Then we switched to SSB, still on 17 meters and made a bunch of contacts with that mode. Kate K8QWR stepped up and made 4 QSOs to help the cause!

Finally, Steve K5SJC fired up on 20m CW and had a good run of contacts on that band.

Sean assembled the log and submitted it to the POTA website right away. 

Here’s the tally:

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Most of the meeting was centered around the structure of club meetings. We discussed the frequency of meetings and how the meeting would be set up with in-person speakers, speakers via Zoom, hands-on activities, swap meets and other ways to conduct our club meetings. We decided to conduct a survey of members to solicit their needs. The club is full of busy people that like to be outdoors. SOTA and POTA can be fun for the avid outdoor enthusiast, of which we have many, but chasing POTA/SOTA is also quite popular among our members, so we may look at focusing on this shared interest a bit more in the future.

The board decided to have a swap meet for our October meeting. Members can bring items they want to sell and many donated items will be available for purchase. All proceeds from donated items will help fund CLARA activities and radio infrastructure here in the valley. We are working on a list for the bigger ticket items that we hope will raise interest and increase participation.

The discussion then shifted to the Monarch repeater. It still isn’t working properly, with the problem seemingly stemming from duplexer, antenna, or other environmental issue, as the repeater hardware functions fin when testing down in BV. We are scheduling a time with Monarch Mountain to access the repeater site. There is heavy construction activity as a new ski lift and about a dozen new runs are being prepared. We need to drive up with diagnostic equipment and climbing gear to address the issue(s). We concluded the meeting at 8:15.

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We continue to receive generous equipment donations and are planning a CLARA swap-fest at the October membership meeting. This will allow members the opportunity to get some great gear at excellent prices while supporting CLARA. All proceeds will fund club activities and radio infrastructure here in the valley.

If you haven’t paid dues, please consider it! You can pay dues on our website, or you can bring them to a meeting or other activity and give them to a board member. Paying dues allows you to vote on CLARA business and also allows you access to any equipment that the club owns. Need to borrow an HF rig for a POTA activation? Just ask!

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The largest ham radio convention in the state will be held Oct 23 to 26 in Grand Junction. Take a look at the website here: https://www.hamconcolorado.com/. Several of our members have already registered and a couple of them are speaking, so it should be a fun time together! That’s it for this edition of the CLARA Current. Thanks to everyone for being a part of CLARA and for supporting amateur radio here in our beautiful valley! 73 and see you at the meeting next week! -KF5WCW