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. It’s bent at the first extension so we can’t lower it. We’re working on what to do next to get it down. Local news article on the storm: https://www.baynews9.com/fl/tampa/news/2020/02/07/storm-damage–reports-of-a-tornado–downed-trees–damaged-homes
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 really nice day but rather cold once it got dark. I worked almost exclusively on the CW station and found I was able to keep up with the slow field day sending speeds. I think it was a success and everyone had a good time.
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.
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 also made a post on the club website: Next ham fest we’ll be doing is the Tampa Bay Ham fest in Plant City on Dec. 13th
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.
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 antennas and radios to compete in the contest, everyone was encouraged to bring their own equipment to this event. I setup my 40ft Spiderbeam mast with a wire dipole antenna. Other people brought end fed antennas, ham sticks and a dual Wolf River coil. Band conditions have been really bad…
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 was again a joint effort between the St Pete Amateur Radio Club, the Clearwater Amateur Radio Society and the Upper Pinellas Amateur Radio Club. The 3 clubs get along well so it’s a good fit. We use the Clearwater Fire Training Center to setup at as we have the last 2…
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. This should be easier. Field day is June 22nd-23rd. Signup here: https://www.sparc-club.org/
Dave WS1ETI gave a good presentation on SETI. http://www.setileague.org/
I gave a presentation at the SPARC club meeting on May 3rd. I used the presentation file I got from Julie K8VOX that she gave at Hamcation. I modified it to be a little more Florida related (as well as adding more pictures from my activations). I also brought in my gear. The presentation went about 30 minutes, and then I fielded a few questions as well as a few more questions regarding the gear. Alan W4UB from the Upper Pinellas Amateur Radio Club saw the presentation online and asked me to do it again at the UPARC meeting on July 6th so I’ll be running through it again for…
