It has been suggested people should know more about what’s going on with Ham Radio. Let me give you a list of the things I’ve enjoyed recently:
- Emergency communications - storm spotting
- Parks on the Air - taking my equipment out to a state or federal park and setting up a temporary station, making as many contacts as I can over a couple of hours (so far, I’ve made a couple thousand contacts in about 8 months - doing just that). It’s called “Activating a Park”.
- Hunting people on the air that are doing the above, I’ve made well over 2000 “hunter” contacts in the last 8 months.
- Building and testing portable antenna systems.
- Teaching and helping other hams with their stations
- Attending ham club meetings (Wichita Amateur Radio Club and Quarter Century Wireless Association). Great fellowship with other hams, sharing experiences, ideas and friendship. WARC web site www.warc1.org. The next WARC meeting is Wednesday June 5th at the Wichita Advanced Learning Library (6PM social, 6:30 meeting).
One thing that’s coming up soon is “Amateur Radio Field Day” (4th weekend in June). A group of hams will setup stations at some location that’s not normally a station and make as many contacts as possible in 24 hours using different modes, antennas and radios. It’s a great opportunity to see operators in action and even get on the air - even if you’re not licensed (under the supervision of someone who is). Field Day.
A number of us in MakeICT are really interested in setting up a station at the facility. We have a spot reserved (in the electronics lab), just need more people involved to make it work. The nice thing about the club station is any licensed operator may use it (within the limits of their license privileges), so even if you don’t have your own station, you can get on the air once we have that going (and you’re checked out on it).
There is so much to do in ham radio, a niche for everyone…
73 de W0RDR
Randy