At the November 2025 regular meeting of SPARC, the membership elected the nominated officers. As there were no challengers to the current board and the current board agreed to serve another year, the officers for the new year are the same as the old year.
Elected for another term include:
Tom Schaefer NY4I – President
Carol De La Torre AB4YI – Vice-President
Bruce Solov K2BHS – Secretary
Will Scott W7WMS – Treasurer
Board Members
Dee Turner N4GD
John Toth KI4UIP
Dan (Nic) Nichols KZ0J
You can find a full list included appointed positions on the Club Officers Page available here.
On behalf of the current board, thank you for your confidence in our leadership. Your support is appreciated.
As you may be aware, the ARRL is supporting a grass roots effort to help pass the Amateur Radio Emergency Preparedness Act (“HOA Bill”). Any licensed amateur or GMRS operator can fill out the form available. Hams can use this link: https://send-a-letter.org/hoa/
If you are both a ham and a GMRS operator, fill them both out…
But clubs can also pitch in to help pass this bill. The difference is clubs were asked to send PDFs of a signed letter (drafted by the organizers of this campaign). The following are the letters that SPARC sent as requested to the organizers and then will in turn hand-deliver the letters to the appropriate representatives. Note that since St. Petersburg is represented by two representatives, I sent a letter for each. These are just for reference. Other local clubs are welcome to the MS Word files if they want to send their own letters. More details about that process if here.
Please support this effort. Even if you do not live in an HOA-community, you never know what the future holds. Many people become hams long after they move into a community (due to availability, choice of schools, proximity to work, etc). Installing an antenna may have not even been a factor when they bought their house; but now as a new ham, it is. Same goes for some future assisted living facility you may have to enter. We all get older and being able to install a reasonable antenna can let you still use your radio into the future. Plus you no doubt have friends that live in an HOA so why not help them out…
The nominating committee led by Hal Chase W1EES put forth a slate of officer nominations at the October 2025 SPARC meeting. All the current officers were willing to run again hence that was the slate the nominating committee put forth. The members in attendance were then asked if there were any nominations from the floor for each specific position. Hearing none, the nominations were closed. Per the SPARC by-laws, nominations from the floor must be made at the October meeting and are not accepted at the November meeting. Since none of the officer positions are contested positions, at the November meeting the secretary will enter a single vote for each officer (per our parliamentary procedure). The net effect is the board serving you today will continue to serve next year.
Additionally, the proposed bylaw changes were submitted by the bylaw review committee chair, Carol AB4YI. These were reviewed at the meeting to constitute due notice to the membership per the SPARC current bylaws. These bylaw changes will be voted on individually at the November December meeting. More details on each proposed change are available here: 2025 By-Laws Revision Project
SPARC as you may know maintains a club station and meeting location at a local business named DMI in Pinellas Park. SPARC was advised recently that due to the owner’s changing priorities, we must find a new meeting location. This also means we must remove the equipment from the club station and all our antennas including the tower. We just found out about this recently and there will more discussions on the subject. Your officers have been contacting others and handling the calls we have been receiving about people offering locations. We are grateful to all as we figure out the best new home for SPARC. We have a special board meeting on October 14th (see right sidebar) and will have info throughout the month and at the next club meeting in November.
Please allow me to stress…this is not due to anything SPARC did. We still maintain a good relationship with the management at DMI. This is the reality of operating a small business and we are incredibly grateful for the generosity DMI has shown us over the years.
We will be in the DMI location through the end of this year so we have time to make this move as an orderly and well-managed project.
I will update this post as we get new information.
WinLink presentation by Mike Drake at SPARC’s July meeting. Email over radio, including concept, detailed operation, and how to set up your own WinLink station.
In this presentation by Mike, he starts with the basic concepts of email via radio and then goes into many of the features of WinLink. Finally, he discusses what is needed to set up your own WinLink station.
Club banners and satellite antenna [Photo by AF4O]It would be somewhat trite to say we got the band back together for ARRL Field Day this year, but that is nonetheless what we did. Members of SPARC teamed up with members from the Clearwater Amateur Radio Society and the Upper Pinellas Amateur Radio Club for the annual ARRL Field Day this past June. Specifically, June 27 and 28th at the Clearwater Fire Training Center off of Belcher Road.
We have been at this facility before with both the other clubs for the most recent Winter Field Day in January and in years past. It is a wonderful facility and sharing the workload with the other clubs allows us to put on what I think is a better event. As with other Field Days in the summer, we opt to setup temporary antennas but we do operate inside. We also use commercial power (since for a real emergency, we are well-versed in using the generators and the Clearwater EOC which is also at this facility has a generator).
We set out to run 3 stations plus the free VHF station for 6 meters and the satellite station. This all went to plan with the three UPARC Elecraft K3 radios, Paul KC4YDY (“6 meter Paul”) Yaesu radio for 6m and the 9700/Arrow antenna satellite station.
We grabbed the usual bonus points such as the natural power QSOs, a visit by a served agency, passing the Field day message to the Section Manager and copying the Field Day bulletin. We also managed to send 10 NTS messages from attendees and even had a youth contact. While we always get the media publicity bonus, this year thanks to the tenacity of Bruce K2BHS, we did it in style.
WFLA Comes to Town
Bruce K2BHS joined the Field Day Planning Committee with the intention of acting as the public relations person. Bruce sent invitations to various elected officials, served agencies and many media outlets. This paid off handsomely. Bruce was contacted by WFLA that they wanted to do a live broadcast from our Field Day site on Sunday morning starting at 6:00 AM. Yes, 6:00 AM on Sunday–not a typo. Reporter Jenna Bass and her camera operator came out to the site and setup for their live shot. But it wasn’t just one live shot. Bruce did three on-camera interviews. You can see one of those videos here.
Jenna Bass of WFLA talks to Kenny K4OB [Photo by AF4O]Jenna Bass of WFLA and Bruce K2BHS during one of the Live Standups [Photo by AF4O].The video at the end of this article is a later video they did at 6:00 PM on the Sunday of Field Day. This has more “action shots” and interviews with other members.
So how did we do?
We made over 2400 QSOs this year. The three HF stations stayed busy as did the 6m station. Here is a map of all the ARRL sections we contacted:
ARRL Sections WorkedAll operators making at least one QSOGraph showing how active the stations were. Notice even overnight stayed relatively busy.
Olev at the Digital station [Photo by N4OHI’s camera]Orin KG1S (foreground), Bruce K2BHS, Danielle, Jeff NE4C and Jason N4BOZ on the background [Photo by N4OHI]
I have plenty of pictures yet to put in a gallery. But this gives you an idea of the event. More to come…
