FYI, I have made some changes to the organization of the club web site.
I modified the menus to put the events calendar and club membership information page under the Meeting Schedule and Location menu, and the standard load page and a new neighboring clubs page under the Radio and Other Resources menu.
I intend to start populating the events calendar again... I apologize for being a little lax on that the last several months.
The Salt Lake County ARES has published their new "Standard Load" of radio frequencies. This is a standardized set of frequencies assigned to specific radio memory locations with the intention of reducing confusion when operating in support of a SLCo ARES incident.
The Standard Load includes a section for local club use, and MARC has identified a set of frequencies that are typically used in our club. This modified Standard Load (including MARC frequencies) is now available. SLCo ARES Standard Load Mar 2021_MARC
The Standard Load also includes a section for individual frequencies.... You should create your own files of frequencies to load into your radios that include your own preferred frequencies in this section.
As they become available, versions of the Standard Load for Chirp, RT Systems, and a DMR Codeplug will be posted as well.
Find the Standard Load here.
As was mentioned on tonight's net, some new information has been posted regarding changes in Utah ARES. Of particular note is the new Groups.io mailing list for ARES information. See below for details. This message was sent via e-mail from Tyler Griffiths (N7UWX).
Happy New year from Utah ARES and Utah ARRL.
First I must apologize. You may be getting this email from more than one source but I feel it is important to get the word out.
Last year, March, 2020, Tyler Griffiths, N7UWX, was appointed as the new Utah ARRL Section Emergency Coordinator (SEC). The SEC appointment is made by our ARRL Section Manager, Mel Parkes, NM7P. The Section Emergency Coordinator (SEC) is the assistant to the Section Manager (SM) for emergency preparedness. The SEC is appointed by the SM to administer all matters pertaining to emergency communications and the Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES®) on a Section-wide basis.
Bob Craven, N7GTE, who has held the SEC position for many years, has stepped down as the SEC but will continue on as the officer for the state Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES). He will still be in charge of the RACES net, annual RACES Conference and any dealing with the State of Utah. Tyler will be working closely with Bob and Mel in this position.
I have created a new email group and web page to keep Utah ARES members and those interested in Emergency Communications informed. The following link will take you to the page to join the group: https://groups.io/g/UtahARES This link will take you to the web page: https://sites.google.com/view/ares-utah/home
If you are an EC (Emergency Coordinator) and have not been contacted or put on the EC email list please contact me and I will be happy to get you added.
If you have any comments, suggestions or question feel free to contact myself or Mel.
Tyler Griffiths, N7UWX Utah ARRL Section Emergency Coordinator
Mel Parks, NM7P Utah ARRL Section Manager
You may be interested in watching this video. It has some very good thoughts on what Grid Down communications would look like!
Grid Down: KM4ACK After Action Report from the 2020 Christmas day Explosion in Nashville, TN.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpmNGrpZkSo
Glad to have you on board if you so choose to be involved.
73 de Tyler Griffiths N7UWX
Utah ARRL Section Emergency Coordinator
As was mentioned (thanks, Chris) on this evening's net, Ham Radio University is sponsoring a virtual event this year with several presentations on various topics.
There are two tracks and here is an example of the topics available:
The event will be held on 9 January 2021 starting at 8:00 AM EST (6:00 AM MST). Please register for the event at the URL above. For details on the presentations, see Ham Radio University Forums. The presentations will be giving using GoToWebinar (see Go To Webinar Attendee Guide for additional information about system requirements).
It is not known at this time if the sessions will be recorded and made available for later viewing. This post will be updated as more information becomes available.
On Saturday, 14 November 2020, MARC and the Taylorsville Amateur Radio Club participated in a "pandemic safe" fox hunt. This was done by having everyone take a bearing from whatever their location was (typically their home, but Neil (KF7PKX) at least took his bearing from his workplace). All of these locations and bearings were given to Dan (N7XDL) who plotted the bearings on a map, which you can see here: Nov14Event_TARC_MARC.
As you can see, not every bearing pointed directly at the fox, which is expected. But if you observe, there were several bearings that did intersect at the approximate location of the fox. For our first try, it was very promising!
We will be participating with Taylorsville for next month's hunt on 12 December 2020. It has not been determined yet if this will be another "pandemic safe" hunt or if we will actually get together in person (maintaining social distancing and wearing masks). Watch this space for updates as we get closer to the event!
Unfortunately, our fearless leader (hi, Dan!) was unable to join us this evening, so we did not have any formal training. Instead, those club members who joined the meeting had a great round table discussion about a few different topics.
The first topic we discussed was about the legal issues of some of the newer digital modes. This was brought up in the context of using VOIP systems to communicate over a mesh network and, in particular, allowing non-amateur operators use such VOIP systems in a distributed network environment without an operator present. This topic has been talked about on several threads on the AREDN site, in particular non-ham-use-of-voip-mesh, part-97-interpretation-ip-phone-deployment-over-mesh, and who-can-use-mesh. The general feel among the club is that a control operator should be present, but it is a gray area. I'd love to have some people comment here on what they think.
Our second topic was how do we get more people involved in the club! We have about 25 official club members, but it seems that the same ten or so are the only ones who appear on the weekly zoom meetings. Why don't the rest of the club members join in? Are they intimidated by the technology? Do they not have the resources (computer and internet connection)? Do they just not know how to get on? We would love to have more people attending the Thursday evening club meetings. If you haven't attended, consider trying to attend the next meeting in August (the 6th). An e-mail with an invite to the meeting will be sent out prior to the meeting (usually the day before). If you have not been getting the invites, please e-mail Jan (KD7ZWV), leave a feedback message, or comment on this post. If you are not comfortable getting the zoom software working, let us know and we will help you out.
Our third topic was along similar lines... how do we get more people (who are not currently members) interested in getting involved with amateur radio? Particularly younger people! Several suggestions were raised, including:
If you have any suggestions or contributions to these topics, post a comment on this thread!
Save the date... August 8th and 9th RFinder will be sponsoring a free ham fest online. Details and sign up here: https://www.qsotodayhamexpo.com/
If you register by July 24th you will have a chance to win one of the early bird prizes!
Adele (KG7GIS) has sent out the May edition of the club newsletter. If you didn't get it, you can download it from the Club Newsletters page.
Travis (KG7KFC) announced on the Sunday net yesterday that his wife has available a large quantity of baking yeast. She is looking for $5.00 for four ounces to recoup some of her costs. Please contact Travis directly if you are interested. Travis's contact information is available on the MARC Roster, which is accessible to all club members. If you can't get a copy of the roster, and you think you should be able to, Contact Us.