I did a lot of stuff with the radio club this year, I wrote a Year in Review about it on the club webpage. My big radio things this year were going to the FCG Contest Dinner at Hamcation, usually it’s on the same day as the club meeting. I got to meet quite a few people I knew from on the air and online only, also I won a power supply in the raffle. Hamcation is on the 2nd weekend in February for 2023 and I’ve already got my tickets to this year’s dinner. I also drove up to Dayton this year and did POTA camping on the way….
K-6700 SPARC in the Park
We had another SPARC in the Park event with the club. Decent turn out and lots of contacts got made.
SPARC tour of WRMI commercial shortwave station
SPARC members took a field trip down to the WRMI commercial station near Okeechobee in Florida. This station runs 15 transmitters at 100k watts each for 1.5 million watts of RF power!
ARRL Field Day 2022
This year we hosted the summer Field Day at the SPARC club station. After a discussion with the members we decide to be a “D” Class station rather than “A” to make it easier since it was the first time we’ve done it as a single club in awhile. “A” stations use generator power and temporary antennas. We just got the permanent tower in working order so we wanted to test it out. We did setup a temporary Zero-Five antenna like the one I have at my house. Saturday was really slow, we had around 350 contacts, but things really picked up Sunday morning and we ended the weekend with…
SPARC Homebrew Night 2022
Winter Field Day 2022
Winter Field Day at the Clearwater Fire Training facility with SPARC, UPARC and CARS.
K-6700 Sawgrass Lake Park – SPARC in the Park
We activated K-6700 Sawgrass Lake Park which is one of the newer added Parks, in St. Petersburg, with the St Petersburg Amateur Radio Club. We got quite a few park-to-park contacts and we’d have everyone send their callsigns out so we gave people quite a boost to their P2P contacts. Billy KN4LUZ made a video:
Field Day 2021
We had our 3-club joint field day this year at the Clearwater Fire Training Facility. We ran 3 stations plus a 6meter FT8 station. We setup 5 antennas including my hexbeam that I used to have on the roof of my old house. The hexbeam went together real easy and worked amazing. We have a triplexer so at one point we had all 3 stations using it on 10,15,20m. I got over 100 contacts on 10m CW which might be more than all my contacts on 10m ever. Here’s a great shot I got at sunset: After taking this photo I worked with Kenny K4OB on CW and we had…
SPARC Club meeting in person
We finally got back to meeting in person. We met outside the church at our normal location. Had 36 people attend, everyone seemed very comfortable. I’ve done more meetings on Zoom than I’ve done in person so I’m still getting the hang of running official meetings. Club secretary Charles W4BPP gave a presentation on Superheterodyne receivers.
SPARC in the Park 2020
We had 15 people show up for the SPARC in the Park event. I brought my Wolf River Coil and setup the KX2 and FT-891. I mostly played with the KX2 CW paddle as I hadn’t tested it out yet. It will take some getting used to. I made a POTA contact and one contact with Billy KN4LUZ in the parking lot. Tom NY4I made a few satellite contacts using the Icom 9700. I spent about 5 hours here, it was a fun time.