The Upper Pinellas Amateur Radio Club is hosting a free Technician License Training and Exam course.
This is a two-day course: November 11 (Training) and November 18 (Training and Exam).
Click here for more information.… Read the rest
UPARC
UPARC members stopped by the QTH of Tom NY4I on Sunday August 20, 2023 to get ready for Tom’s antenna raising in September. Work included assembly of the Mosley MP-33-NW beam antenna and some projects in the shack. Thanks to the work party including (alphabetically): Alan W4UB, Bob K1NLS, Fred W2SUB, Jack N4KIN, Olev KO4WUB, Rob WD4IFT, Ron W4RFA and Ryan AF4O.
A few notable events included the beam assembly. Mosley sent the wrong instructions in the box so the team had to resort to watching a YouTube video to learn about the installation of the antenna. The team setup saw horses in the living room to assemble the elements with Fred W2SUB checking the video on his phone. I … Read the rest
President’s Award
Dee Hooker W4DCH
Dee received the President’s Award for service to the Upper Pinellas Amateur Radio Club and for being a past member of the Board of Directors. Congratulations Dee!
Presentation
There were two presentations: Awards and CW Key. The CW Key presentation was terrific. There were straight keys, iambic paddles, single lever paddles, keyers and more from vendors such as Bencher, Bengali, MFJ, Vibroplex, and more. It was great being able to try different styles of keys. You can see a few in the photo above. Sadly we didn’t get a photo of just the keys.
Meeting after the Meeting
After a morning of updates on the club and learning something new, some … Read the rest
Get on the Air (GOTA) Awards presented for outstanding Field Day Support
In this month’s meeting, Club President, Fred Botero, chose to recognize many individuals who provided outstanding support for the recent ARRL Field Day held on June 24-25. These hard working folks were all presented with the official ARRL Field Day GOTA pins in recognition of their hard work to ensure all of us were able to get on the air at Field Day. The pins are quite handsome, showing the ARRL logo with a large GOTA title on a gold and black background. They are something to be proud of and suitable for wearing on radio themed clothing, hats or at our events.
Three groups were recognized with … Read the rest
ARRL Field Day 2023 is in the books. This year we put up a lot of antennas and set up a lot of radios in some very hot and tough conditions to post a greater score than we achieved last year! In addition, we had some great food and learned a lot about being flexible in setting up our antennas when fire trucks were parked in our regular OCF dipole antenna spot.
We operated on SSB, FT8, CW and Satellite achieving unofficial 3326 points. This is 570 points more than we achieved last year.
Our satellite contact came quick this year on the first RS-44 pass of Field Day. Tom NY4I made the contact on SSB with assistance from Ryan
President’s Award
Josh KO4VVX & Melissa KS4MOM Luria
“In recognition of your outstanding contributions and achievements in service to the Upper Pinellas Amateur Radio Club for the following:
Promoting amateur radio to scout organizations and organizing an outstanding JOTA event.”
Presentation
There were two presentations: GMRS by Ryan AF4O and ARRL Field Day.
Meeting after the Meeting
After a morning of updates on the club and learning something new, some of us head down the road to continue the fellowship over lunch at Sonny’s BBQ in Clearwater. We had a good time, ate good food and the author cannot comment on adult beverages as he wasn’t there.… Read the rest
Registration for meals is now closed.
But you are still welcome to come out–just plan on bringing your own meals.
ARRL Field Day is a combined event to test our ability to setup radio communication under less than ideal conditions–think temporary antennas, generators and radio gear. Our event this year is a combined event with two clubs—the Clearwater Amateur Radio Society (CARS) and the Upper Pinellas Amateur Radio Club (UPARC). The date is June 24th starting at 2:00 PM until Sunday June 25th at 2:00 PM. Setup generally begins in earnest at 9:00 AM on Saturday morning. The location for all of this is the Clearwater Fire Department Fire Training Center at 1716 N. Belcher Road in Clearwater. Click … Read the rest
UPARC and CARS came together for a successful breakfast at Another Broken Egg Cafe in Clearwater. If you haven’t joined us before please think about it. We meet on the fourth Saturday of the month. Check this link for dates/times:
https://uparc.org/events/list/?tribe-bar-search=breakfast… Read the rest
President’s Award
Ryan Rager AF4O
Has anyone known Ryan to not be doing Amateur Radio? Anyone? Ryan is always ready, willing and able to deploy for anything Amateur Radio related: Need help putting up a wire? He’s there. Need help pouring concrete for the base of your new tower? Done. Need to dig into something obscure. He’s there. He is always ready to help anyone when it comes to Amateur Radio. UPARC is fortunate to have him!
PS. We need to remind Ryan he isn’t in the Air Force any longer and doesn’t need to stand at attention!
Presentation
Home Brew
This month’s presentation was all about things club members built themselves. Gerry WR6N started us off by showing us … Read the rest
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