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 to pack up so please plan on attending starting at 7:00 AM.

Finally, the December test session will go on as scheduled at DMI.

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 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.

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 up at 8:00 AM and go to 6:00 PM. All times local.

There is a special award for those that sweep (work all) the “PIRATES” stations so people want to work us. That makes it more fun and it should keep the stations busy. But we need plenty of operators to work those stations looking for us as K4P.

The Florida QSO Party is always a popular event at the SPARC station. We run Phone (Voice/SSB) and CW (Morse code). We generally have at least three stations active so we need plenty of operators. There is no digital component so just SSB and CW. Our contest coordinator, Paul KA4IOX will no doubt have more information about this including the opportunity to sign-up but plan now to attend and fill in a spot. Remember that people want to work us for the sweep of the PIRATE stations so you can sit on one frequency and just call CQ. As mentioned, we can only so that with people. We never want to hear, “Hey, I could never find that K4P station“.

So save the date and plan on attending to take a shift. It should be a blast! Argh!!!

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 Day was a success and lots of fun.

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

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.

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