There is a Slack group for Amateur Radio in Utah!

For those of you who have never used Slack before, it is an instant messaging platform that is widely used in corporate and private communications.  Slack provides a quick means of communication without the spam and noise of e-mail.  It supports multiple "channels" for communication, as well as direct messages between people and ad hoc groups.  Slack provides an online history, so you don't have to be online all the time to see what people have been saying.  There are also mobile apps for it that you can install directly on your smart phone device(s).

Invites to the Utah Amateur Radio Slack, and specifically to the MARC channel (#marc) have been sent to all club members listed in the current roster.  If you didn't get an invite and you think you should have, please contact Jan (KD7ZWV).

If you got an invitation but you don't want to use Slack, don't worry about it... you can simply ignore the invitation.

The general club meeting for December 19th has been cancelled.  We will resume regular club meetings in January.  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

At our recent club meeting and potluck dinner, Gary Duhaine presented a short slideshow of some old radios he has collected over the years.  He also brought several of these old radio receivers in so we could look at them up close.  Please enjoy this slideshow featuring some of Gary's radios.

old_radios_slideshow

(Note, there were two versions of this slideshow, one of which had an audio component, but the audio component was extremely limited and also increased the size of the video by about fourteen times.  If we are able to get the correct audio component added to the video and get it sufficiently compressed, we will update this post with the new version.)

I have added links for CircuitLab (the circuit designer/simulator software that was demoed at the 14 November 2019 meeting) and also a link to the home built 2m radio project for any who might be interested.

In our club meeting on 17 October 2019, we discussed the importance of using correct, concise terminology and language when relaying messages.  We are all familiar with the standard NATO phonetic alphabet as used in amateur radio... a copy of which is included here for your reference:

I present here a "humorous" version of the alphabet that I call "Phoneyetic"... you'll see why in a moment.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, do not use this version of the alphabet on the air!

Jan presented on Electricity and Electronics for General class licensees at our club meeting on October 10th.  See the presentation on our Radio and Other Resources page.  Also new on that page is an expanded list of schematic components for your reference.

N7XDL (Dan)'s presentation at the October 2nd club meeting has been posted to the site... find it here:

Electricity, Components and Circuits

Members of the Murray Amateur Radio Club participated this evening in an emergency services drill.  Assigned in groups of two radio operators, and equipped with either their own personal 1.25m band radios or radios provided by the Murray City Fire Department, members of the club dispersed to various locations around the city.  Arriving at their assigned locations, each team, using a tactical call sign, reported in to net control at the Murray EOC at station 83.  Each team was supplied with a simulated emergency condition which they reported to net control.

This exercise showed that the MARC members are capable of supporting Murray City in an emergency, passing messages from an on-scene incident commander in the event that normal communications channels are unavailable.  We demonstrated professionalism in our operations and followed our communications plan.

In other club actions, the membership ratified the new meeting schedule so it is an official club policy.  To reiterate, this is the three meetings a month schedule with the first meeting of the month devoted to Technician-related subjects, the second to General/HF-related subjects, and the third being the general monthly club meeting covering various subjects of interest to all.

If you haven't been to a club meeting lately, you should plan on joining us in October!

Due to a rash of spam account registrations (i.e. scripts trying to register for the site so they can post spammy comments on posts and pages), we have added a reCAPTCHA to the login and registration forms.  This will appear to you as shown here.

Simply click the box to confirm that you are a human.  In some cases (for example, your IP appears to have performed suspicious activity) you may be asked for further "easy for a human" activities such as identifying the contents of photographs.

The presentation for the 12 September 2019 meeting is now available:  HF (General) Bands