Category: Club
March 5, 2021
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…
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March 17, 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.…
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February 9, 2020
The club tower was bent badly during a storm that came through on Thursday night which had a tornado. The club weather station clocked the wind at 65mph. https://www.sparc-club.org/sparc-tower-damage-from-pinellas-park-tornado/ It's bent at the first extension so we can't lower it. We're working on…
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January 28, 2020
Once again we had Winter Field Day at the Clearwater Fire Training Facility. It's a great location and they give us the run of the training areas. We setup a beam, a rotating dipole, 2 slopers and an off center fed dipole. We ended up with over 1200 contacts and covered every US section. It was a…
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December 23, 2019
I received my ARRL Volunteer Examiner credentials today. Now I can proctor the amateur radio exams the club puts on every 3rd Tuesday of the month.
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November 15, 2019
This past weekend was the annual SPARC Fest, the club's hamfest. It's free for vendors so we keep getting a great turn out. 65 vendors showed up. As the new President I ran the club table, we sold quite a bit of stuff. It's interesting what people will buy. I was there to help setup before dawn…
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November 2, 2019
At tonight's SPARC meeting I was elected as club president. I am looking forward to leading the club and getting even more involved in the hobby. The first event after my election is next Saturday 11/9 for the annual SPARCfest at Freedom Lake Park in Pinellas Park, FL, it's free so come on out.…
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September 25, 2019
Once again the St. Pete, Clearwater and Upper Pinellas radio clubs joined forces for a radio clubs in the park event. We met up at Eagle Lake park in Largo, FL. This is a nice county park so it doesn't count for Parks on the Air but it was still a fun event. Unlike Field Day where we setup specific…
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June 23, 2019
This weekend was ARRL Field Day. This is also my 100th blog post, Yay! I was on the committee for Field Day this year. We had conference calls and did a dry run to make sure we had all the connectors and accessories we needed. Quite a bit of planning is required to make this event go smoothly. It…
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June 8, 2019
Today we had the field day dry run. We setup all the computers and made sure we had all the cabling we need. There's a lot of cables to run 3 stations. We also have 1000ft of coax. At winter field day we had a bunch of 100ft coax all jumpered together and it was a chore to troubleshoot the issues.…
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