Operating Archives

UPARC in the Park Event – April 2024

By Fred Botero on April 30, 2024

On Saturday, April 20th members of UPARC met at Honeymoon Island to host our annual POTA (Parks on the Air) event. We had about 15 members and guests turn out and made over 80 contacts on SSB and FT-8. The team braved very heavy mosquito swarming early on to get setup and was on the air around 8:45 AM.The wind picked up a bit and blew away most of the bugs by 10:00. That and some very compassionate sharing of bug spray by those well prepared individuals helped us get to the task at hand.

This year, thanks to Tom NY4I, we were able to turn in logs which gave credits to both the club callsign W4AFC and each individual … Read the rest

UPARC Members Visit Crooked River State Park in Georgia

By Tom Schaefer NY4I on March 25, 2024

Over the weekend of March 20th – March 23rd, 2024, Ryan AF4O, Jeff NE4C and Tom NY4I traveled to Crooked River State Park in Georgia for a RISK Tournament (yes, RISK the board game). The tournament is in the park in rented cottages. Besides the tournament, there is plenty of time for other activities so Ryan brought his Icom 7300 and the Elecraft amplifier along with wire antennas to activate the park for POTA with 500 watts of power. Jeff NE4C and Tom NY4I were also able to operate the station setup in the kitchen table of a cabin. The pile-ups were really big as the power and park attracted lots of stations wanting to work the park. All three … Read the rest

Winter Field Day 2024 Announcement

By Tom Schaefer NY4I on January 5, 2024

Do you like operating in the field but hate dripping in sweat while setting up antennas? Does the idea of enduring another Field Day constantly fighting off every mosquito in Tampa Bay make you wish they held Field Day in January? Well, you’re in luck! Winter Field Day is an event very similar to the June ARRL Field Day except—you guessed it—it’s held in Winter. Specifically January 27 & 28, 2024. This is a joint operation with the Clearwater Amateur Radio Society (CARS). The event will be held at the Clearwater Fire Training Facility on Belcher Road south of Sunset Point Road in Clearwater. Prior efforts were a great success.

Winter Field Day is a 24 hour operating exercise where … Read the rest

Backyard DXpeditions

By Jack Kinney on November 22, 2023

Recently Ryan, AF4O created a new channel in our slack group called #backyard-dxpeditions

The channel is dedicated to finding places in our own backyard to play radio, whether it’s POTA, IOTA or a community park around the corner. Check it out and get involved. Who knows what we may find outside the shack!… Read the rest

Honeymoon Island Activation April 2023

By Tom Schaefer NY4I on May 2, 2023

On Saturday, April 29, 2023, UPARC members set out to Honeymoon Island State Park to operate in the field for a Parks on the Air (POTA) activation. Being a Florida State Park, Honeymoon Island is POTA park K-1880. Normally, this means we setup antennas and radios and sit back and work the pileups. But this day, the HF propagation gods took their time showing up. Initially, contacts were hard to come by on SSB. FT8 started off OK but 20m SSB was quite tough. But with perseverance, Team Luria (Charlotte KO4WNK and Joshua KO4VVX) made the majority of the SSB contacts with Olev KO4WUB and Rob WB4IFT making the FT8 contacts.

All total we worked 61 stations with 36 SSB … Read the rest

UPARC in the Park is coming on Saturday, April 29th!

By Tom Schaefer NY4I on April 20, 2023

UPARC will again be activating Honeymoon Island State Park for a POTA activation on Saturday April 29th, 2023 starting at 8:00 AM.

Honeymoon Island State Park is POTA park K-1880 located at the end of the Dunedin Causeway. In case you have not been there before, there is a fee for each car to get into the park so carpooling with others would allow you to share the entrance fee. Pavilions are first come, first serve but we plan to get there early to grab a location with power. Ask on the club’s repeater (147.12 + PL 100 Hz) or on the club’s Slack channel. You can also look for all the antennas in the parking lot near … Read the rest

Why People Say “This Is” when Checking into a Net.

By Tom Schaefer NY4I on February 20, 2023

You may have listened to a local 2m net and heard people saying “This Is” before they give their call sign during check-ins. An alternative is they may say “Net Control” instead of “This is”. Plus there is the combined effort of “Net Control, This is”. Why are they doing this? If you have wondered about that, here is the answer…

One problem when the net control station calls for check-ins is that stations all try to check-in at once and thus can double. Doubling is when two or more competing stations transmit at the same time, one station captures the receiver and gets through rendering the calls of other people transmitting moot since they are not heard. Another … Read the rest

POTA Activation at Honeymoon Island

By Fred Botero on November 1, 2022

On Saturday, October 29th, UPARC had a very fun day at Honeymoon Island activating two club stations and making over 150 contacts as a Parks on the Air (POTA) activity. We had a great turnout of club members along with family and some visitors who had curiosity about ham radio which we took care to enthusiastically explain our wonderful hobby. The star visitor was a very sizable gopher tortoise that wandered close to our antenna guylines but eventually decided to high-tail it out of there (well, as fast a tortoise can go)! The weather was very nice and our pavilion (special thanks to Ray W8RD) had shade, tables and shore power along with a few mosquitoes, but we did not … Read the rest

Jamboree-on-the-Air a Success

By Jack Kinney on October 18, 2022

The Upper Pinellas Amateur Radio Club went to Lutz, FL to help Boy Scout Troop 12 participate in the 2022 Jamboree-on-the-Air (JOTA) event. We assisted with training, license testing, setup and operation of amateur radio equipment. The most important part was getting the Scouts on the air so they could learn about our hobby and work toward a Radio Merit Badge. Contacts were made around the US as well as Ireland, Germany, LY5A in Lithania and ZS6CCY in South Africa.

Here the Scouts were learning from Ryan KO4KGP about how a Satellite can be used to talk to different parts of the planet and even the ISS in outer space! The team tried really hard to make an ISS … Read the rest

A Field Day For Hams

By Jack Kinney on January 8, 2022

If you worked Summer Field Day last year you may recall a woman walking around with a microphone. That was Mary Beth Toole creator of a podcast called sonic earth expeditions. A Field Day For Hams has been posted. It is 33 minutes long but worth the listen I think. It would also be good for someone who has never worked at Field Day. She only references SPARC in the podcast but you might hear yourself in there somewhere!

… Read the rest

Posts published in “Operating”