Posts published in “Club Station”

SPARC to Meet At New Location Starting January 2026

By Tom Schaefer NY4I on 12/06/2025

At the December 2025 SPARC meeting, members approved moving the SPARC meetings to the Wyoming Antelope Club in Pinellas Park. We will meet there starting with our January 2, 2026 meeting. There is more info to follow about the site including pictures but please review the meeting location page for more information on getting to the site. PLEASE remember to stay under the posted speed limit. We are guests so please observe the posted speed limit.

There is also a work party on Sunday December 14th at the DMI location … Click for more

SPARC Searching for a New Home…

By Tom Schaefer NY4I on 10/03/2025

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 … Click for more

Argh Matey….Get yourselves ready for the Florida QSO Party…

By Tom Schaefer NY4I on 02/26/2025

Before you think I have completely gone around the bend, this year’s Florida QSO Party has special event stations to spell out the word P-I-R-A-T-E-S. Stations around the state will be signing special 1×1 callsigns where the single letter suffix spells out PIRATES.

The Florida QSO Party is both Saturday April 26th and Sunday April 27. It favors the daytime hours so you can still get your sleep. On Saturday, the contest starts at Noon local time and goes until 10:00 PM. Sunday morning we pick back … Click for more

SPARC Field Day Results & Video

By Tom Schaeffer W4CU on 07/03/2024

The 2024 SPARC Field Day was attended by 47 Hams, guests and visitors. Twenty two individuals operated and shared in reaching 1924 QSOs. The breakdown of QSOs was 800 on phone, 671 on CW and 453 on FT8. The Club’s total submitted score was 6,796 with 6096 points attributed to contacts and 700 bonus points for items such as media publicity, sending formal messages, copying the ARRL Field Day message, and site visits by an elected official. The picnic lunch/dinner event was enjoyed by all who attended. Over all, Field … Click for more

The SPARC Tower has a new Power Winch

By Ed NZ1Q on 02/18/2024

The SPARC team finished the installation of the power winch on the club tower replacing the old hand crank. Those who have cranked the tower up in the past using the old hand crank can appreciate the improvement.

Watch the video Here

Related Images:

Cancelled: October SPARC Operating Event: Makrothen RTTY Contest

By Tom Schaeffer W4CU on 10/02/2023

Unfortunately SPARC will not participate in theMakrothen RTTY event and the club station will not be open October 14 and 15

Makrothen RTTY is a favorite operating event of SPARC and other RTTY operators because the score for a contact is the distance from you to the contact. Scores in the millions of points are routine. In fact, in 2017 SPARC placed Second World Wide with a score of 2,023,660. This year’s contest will take place October 14 & 15.