SPARC member and former club Vice President Rich, AA2MF, was among the top finishers in the 2021 ARRL RTTY Roundup radiosport event. Competing in the Single Operator, RTTY Only, Low Power category, Rich earned 102,178 points, giving him a top ten finish in the US and Canada. Congratulations Rich for a job well done.
Posts published in “Operating”
There is a much bigger wrap-up article to come yet but in the meantime, thanks to everyone that came out to Field Day this year. The facility was great as always, the teams worked great together and I believe everyone had a good time. We had around 60 people there and made around 1200 QSOs (preliminary scoring summary here) plus obtained our satellite contact. More to come but in the mean time, take a gander at this fantastic photo from our club president, Pat AA0O.
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We have a real-time status display of the operation at this year’s Field Day. The contacts are tracked in real-time and available in several handy graphs. If you can’t make it to Field Day but want to check on our progress, please click on the map at the right side of the website. You can also access it directly at https://www.sparc-club.org/sparc-real-tme-contest-display-dashboard/
Enjoy!
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Hi space fans. If you enjoy Alan’s (KO4CR) informative QST announcements about space flights, perhaps you would enjoy knowing where those Starlink satellites are right now! Point your browser to https://satellitemap.space and see where the satellites are in real time.
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Sign-up Sheet Now Available See below…
Signup Deadline to guarantee Meals: Tuesday June 22 @ 11:59 PM.
After a long cold winter of no Field Day events, we are happy to announce that Field Day 2021 is on! As has been our mode for the last several events, we will be operating Field Day with a combined club effort with the Clearwater Amateur Radio Society and the Upper Pinellas Amateur Radio Club. The event is on June 26 and 27th, 2021 at the Clearwater Fire Training Center (1716 N Belcher Rd., Clearwater, FL 33765). The operating starts at 2:00 PM local time and runs 24 hours through Sunday. Setup typically starts at 8:00 AM on Saturday morning.
In keeping with current CDC guidelines, people that are vaccinated are free to attend with no restrictions. We do suggest if you have not been vaccinated that you plan on a mask. (Note this is subject to any restrictions the Clearwater Fire Department may put upon us–more on that later).
We will operate 3 HF stations with CW, SSB and FT8 available. We also have 6 meters (SSB and FT8) and a satellite station. We will have more info shortly including a form where you can tell us if you will be staying for meals, operating, etc. Please plan on attending Field Day 2021 and welcome everyone back to the world of operating in-person!
You can access the sign-up sheet here. Please sign up so we know how many to plan for food.
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This weekend (May 1 and 2) is the “4 QSO parties in one” weekend.
This includes the New England QSO Party (6 NE states), 7th Call Area (8 states), Indiana and Delaware.
QSO parties are a great way to pick up states you need to WAS on different bands. With better propagation lately, you may even be able to get some 10 meter states.
To make it easier to log, the organizers of these four events will all accept logs with contacts of the others. They will filter out the ones that matter to them. Both TR4W and N1MM support a combined log (including full dupe checking and multiplier counting). In each program, you use the contest name of IN7QPNE (yes Delaware is included in there too if not in name).
As a special treat, the Delaware QSO Party only will allow FT8/FT4 contacts. It is a bit strange in how they do it so read the rules but do not be surprised if you see stations calling CQ FD this weekend on FT8 (again, read the rules here https://www.fsarc.org/qsoparty/rules.htm)
Start times are as follows:
Delaware QSO Party: 1700Z, May 1 to 2359Z, May 2 (1:00 PM EDT start)
New England QSO Party: 2000Z, May 1 to 0500Z, May 2 and 1300Z-2400Z, May 2 (4:00 PM EDT start)
Indiana QSO Party: 1500Z, May 1 to 0300Z, May 2 (11:00 AM EDT start)
7th Call Area QSO Party: 1300Z, May 1 to 0700Z, May 2 (9:00 AM EDT start)
You can get the latest version of TR4W here: https://tr4w.net
For N1MM, just run M1MM and follow the update prompts.