NEW YEAR for SEKARC - 2015 !!

Happy New Year... Welcome to 2015 !!

2015 should be a great year for the SEKARC as we have plans for many new activities and better meeting content with our new meeting facility and it will be exciting. Here is a summary of some of the thoughts we have on our agenda for 2015.

The first item on our list is a local CW practice night. Many in the club and the SEK area are learning CW or need a brush up so David NØWKZ suggested a local CW net or similar weekly activity. At the coffee QSO Jack WDØCFH mentioned maybe not an organized net but maybe an hour set aside each week for local CW practice sessions. Look for info on these to be announced very soon! Any suggestions for a night and time?

To begin with, the January meeting on 1/31/15 will feature the Salvation Army Team Emergency Radio Network ( SATERN ) communication vehicle from Kansas City.  We will get a look around the truck and discuss what SATERN does and how we can get involved. Here is a link to the national webpage SATERN.

March, or the the first sign of warm Wednesday weather we will head to a park after the Coffee QSO for some field work! This is always fun and this year we will be trying new locations for our Wed park days so stay tuned for that.


June will bring the clubs 3rd annual Field Day and I am pretty sure that Big Brutus location is hard to beat and hopefully the stormy weather will stay away and we will make great improvements on our 2014 Field Day totals! Mark your calendar early !! June 27th and 28th !!

September 5,6 Little Balkins Days Special Event Station. This is something we have talked about and in 2015 we should just DO IT! Imagine having a small tent with radio gear setup downtown maybe down by the car show? What great community PR and exposure. We could even discuss creating a special QSL card for the event and post it with the Special Events on ARRL.org. Anyone interested in heading up this project, send me an email and we will get it rolling.

Early Summer Foxhunt !! See this SEKARC post for more info. One thing we would need to do before the hunt is make some cheap tape measure directional antennas to hunt with! So this might be multiple events from antenna to field hunt. Keep your eyes looking for a cheap STEEL 1" wide tape measure for this project. Harbor Freight is a good source... if you are in Joplin pick up a couple for the build meeting.

Click To Enlarge

There are lots of ideas so please comment below with your thoughts and if you have a new idea for the club then comment below! All ideas are considered so throw them on the table. We want to be a club where all interests are considered and welcomed.

Another goal we have for 2015 is to begin to develop a VE testing crew here in the SEK area. We have had to turn a few inquiries away and it would be nice if our club can work to get them going in 2015 or at the very least begin the process! To go along with that, Steve KEØAKN suggested some training assistance with those studying for Tech or even upgrades. There is a lot of knowledge in this club and it would be nice to see that forwarding the hobby!

One thing we kind of started aleady was involvement in local emergency communications with SATERN group and the local Salvation Army here in Pittsburg. We are in contact with the County Emergeny Coordinator Eldon Bedene and more will be discussed at the Jan meeting.

Does anyone in the club have any involvemnt or contact with the Middle Schools or High Schools? Maybe it would be neat to get one interested in starting a school Ham club? This seems to ge a great way to get young people involved in the hobby! ARRL has frequent School Club Roundups!

Something I think that would be great for the club is to get more contributors to the site. Write about your radio memories, plans, gear or anything really! If anyone would like to see how the website works behind the scenes, let me know! It's so easy to write up your drafts, add photos and videos that anyone can do it! Mt grammer is horrible when it comes to writing skills so don't let that stop you. If I can do it, you can also! I think it would be great just to hear and post about your latest cool DX contact or just an interesting QSO you had. You can always just send me an email with the info/story and I will post it for you! Send away!

Like Tom N2UHC suggested, all of these will help increase interest in the hobby and grow the number of hams in the area! I hope for great things from the SEKARC and its members in 2015. Let's make it even greater than 2014 and we made some great strides and things are going well. Let's keep it rolling...

73... KAØEGE