Please attend the November meeting, this Thursday (November 7th) at 7 PM at Kirsten's Hideout. Meeting agenda is attached.
Also, a reminder for all those who have not yet paid their 2024/2025 dues - instructions can be found on the club website at https://karc.ca/become_a_KARC_member
If you cannot attend the meeting in person, please use the following link to attend virtually.
Based on the discussion at the last club meeting Relph VA7VZA asked Kirsten ( of Kirsten's Hideout) if we could have the KARC Christmas Dinner on Thursday December 12th. She says that works, so keep that day clear if you would like to come. We will send out more details as we make the arrangements!
On Thursday, October 10th, Dave VE7LTW, Ralph VA7VZA and Brock VA7AV visited the VE7FUS site on Coach Hill and replaced the existing dual band base antenna with a new one of similar design. The existing antenna had been found to have been damage, with the fiberglass vertical section split and the internal RF element falling out. The repeater had been blowing fuses, suggesting that something was wrong, and hopefully the problem was limited to the antenna.
The mast was dropped, the antennas swapped and the mast returned to vertical. The repeater checked OK at that point and is back in operation.
The annual KARC fall picnic was held on Sunday October 6th at the Aberdeen Longboard Park. Three HF antennas were demonstrated, including an NVIS 40m dipole (Ralph VA7VZA), a vertical (Simon VE7RIZ) and a magnetic loop (Norm VE7APF). Several contacts were completed on the HF bands, confirming that simple portable antenna antennas can be quite effective.
In addition, a Meshtastic node was set up on the 915 MHz ISM band to show the surprising range a simple device like this can have.
Members of the public stopped by to find out what we were doing, and we were able to reconnect with two local hams who haven't recently been active. The picnic operations may have inspired more participation!
The October meeting will be held at a Kirsten's Hideout Cafe, the same place we have our weekly club breakfast every Saturday. The address is 1390 Columbia Street. The restaurant is located in the Canada's Best Value Inn. It is just before where Columbia and Battle Streets join. If you have trouble finding it, you can call Ralph VA7VZA at 250-319-5925.
This year's fall picnic will be held on Sunday 6th October from 13:00 to 16:30 at the Kamloops Longboard Park (Highland Park) in Upper Aberdeen. The address is 2350 Pacific Way, just behind the Pacific Way Elementary School. Parking is on Pacific Way and access is either through the school parking lot, or through the yellow gate on Pacific just East of the school boundary. There is an outhouse on the site. We will be monitoring VE7RLO (147.320+ and 442.525+ PL100) for anyone that needs directions or help finding the picnic site.
As well as our usual get-together and HF setup, through Sol VA7NIN, we have invited members of the local 4WD community to attend. The objective is to give them a demonstration of the different types of radio communication that are available to Amateurs that would be useful to people operating in the backcountry out of cell and 2m repeater range . We will be demonstrating line-of-sight and repeater communications on VHF and UHF, and regional and DX on HF. If things go according to plan, we will have a 40m NVIS dipole to demonstrate regional communications (out to a few hundred kilometres) and a 20m vertical or beam to demonstrate long distance HF communications.
We will also bring some Meshtastic nodes to demonstrate. For those of you who are not up on the latest radio fads, Meshtastic is a new method of sending text messages through a mesh network of small and inexpensive ($50) radios that can be used over short distances to communicate. It does not require a licence from ISED. It is being used already by some 4WD enthusiasts to communicate between vehicles.
Guests are welcome, and we are looking forward to seeing you at the picnic!
If you have any questions, please contact Ralph VA7VZA at rsadams@telus.net
The meeting will be held at a NEW LOCATION - Kirsten's Hideout Cafe, the same place we have our weekly club breakfast every Saturday. The address is 1390 Columbia Street. The restaurant is located in the Canada's Best Value Inn. It is just before where Columbia and Battle Streets join. If you have trouble finding it, you can call Ralph VA7VZA at 250-319-5925. If you wish to join online please use this link: https://meet.google.com/chm-qobq-ahm
Draft agenda and minutes of last meeting in June may be found below (click "read more" to see full page). The objective of the meeting is to plan what we want to do as a club over the next year, so this is probably the most important meeting this year. Please bring your ideas. No matter what they are we will consider them. If you have any items to add to the agenda, please contact Ralph VA7VZA.
The next monthly meeting will be held on Thursday June 6 at 7PM. Please see the attached draft agenda.
This will be our last meeting before the usual summer break. Will be holding a special election in order to fill positions which were not filled at the AGM last month. We will also be learning about the club autopatch, so if you've never used an autopatch before now is the time to learn how!
We have lost access to Big Blue Button, but Brock has found an interim option with Google Meet. Because we are limited to one hour with Google, we will start the online meeting just before 7pm.
To join the meeting in person please meet outside the lobby of the Victoria Building at 210 Victoria Street. The KARC meeting will be held in the offices of the Province of BC on the 5th Floor. This is a controlled access building so please try to be there by 6:50pm so we can start the meeting promptly on time at 7pm. Please wait outside until someone comes to open the door. You may also call (250) 318-5150 to let us know you are downstairs waiting.
Myles VE7FSR received a panicked call from Vern VE7VGO on Saturday, May 18. The big storm that blew through on the Thursday evening broke one of the guy wires on Vern's HF beam antenna and the antenna and mast were severely bent over and at risk of falling on his neighbours house. Myles went over on Saturday afternoon and helped Vern to install a temporary guy which was tied off to his fruit tree, with the hope it would keep the mast from falling over until we could get a crew out to perform a permanent fix.
A call went out on Saturday night, and Jordan VE7OSX, Ralph VA7VZA, and Myles agreed to meet at 11am on Sunday to help Vern get things fixed. Jordan was quick to get up on the roof and untangled the two guy wires that were twisted together, and he removed them from where they had become stuck under a roof vent. Myles used his 30ft telescopic mast to connect a temporary rope guy that was used to get the mast back to vertical, and the temporary rope guy supported the mast/antenna while Vern and Ralph worked on splicing the broken aircraft cable guy wire.
The repair crew started at 11am, and we had things finished and cleaned up by 11:50am. Not bad for a bunch of amateurs!
Thank you very much to Jordan for your quick work on the roof, for Ralph for bringing all the high quality tools, and for Vern to being so calm when we were all worried the thing was going to blow over!
We are blessed to have such a great club and such awesome members who will drop everything to help a fellow ham.
The KARC held our first official POTA activation and spring picnic at McConnell Lake Provincial Park on May 5, 2024.
We had an amazing turnout which included: Bob VA7BKN, Doug VA7GPX, Dave VE7LTW, Solomon VA7NIN, Iain VE7IET, Dwight VE7BV, Brock VA7AV, Tom VA7TWL and his XYL Gabriele, Jim VE7HS, Kyle (no call sign), Shane VE7JFF, Simon VE7RIZ and his son Bryson, Ian VE7HHS, and Mike VE7KPZ and his XYL Jane VE7WWJ came all the way from Vernon. Shane VE7JFF helped organize, and he, Simon and Mike all brought radios and antenna setups ideal for a POTA activation.
Things got off to a brisk start once VE7UT was spotted, and the operators made a total of 37 contacts before we were rained out. Operators VE7JFF, VE7RIZ and VE7KPZ made 4 contacts on 2M, 28 contacts on 20M, and 5 contacts on 40M.
