12/05/2025
St. Petersburg Amateur Radio Club
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!
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.
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.
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.
In preparing to do some rewiring in my shack, I investigated the use of crimp-on coax connectors. I ended up purchasing a crimp tool along with coax connector and Powerpole dies from DX Engineering. I can now easily install crimp-on connectors on a variety of coax cables. The die for Anderson Power Pole connectors will make their installation a snap as well.
In my research, I checked out a number of YouTube videos on the subject, I found this one very interesting.
What caught my attention were the scissors used to cut the outer insulation, inner dielectric, foil shield and braid. Digging deeper revealed that they are Messi & Paoloni “Special Coax Scissors.”
These scissors were designed by M & P “to ensure accuracy and delicacy while cutting the cable..”
What makes these scissors unique is the high hardness steel straight nickel-plated blades. The external sides of the blades are coated with a thick chrome plating. The internal mating sides of the blades are not chromed to ensure a correct friction while closing, prolonged life and reducing wear in the blade and its unique cable stripper notch. Its the cable stripper notch that differentiates these scissors from ordinary scissors. Unlike most conventional wire strippers, the edges of the notch are razor sharp. The large size of the notch makes it easy to work with coax up to 3/8” OD. The cut is extremely clean and leaves no burrs. They are also much safer than using a razor blade to make the necessary cuts.
I purchased my scissors from GigaParts. .
I use Anderson Powerpole connectors for all my 12VDC connections. My new crimping tool (see above) will make their installation easier. My research also revealed another tool previously unknown to me, the Anderson Powerpole Insertion/Extraction tool.
This tool is used with the Powerpole 15 to 45 amp terminals. The tool facilitates extraction of the metal terminals from assembled Powerpole connectors and easy insertion of the metal terminal into an empty Powerpole housing.
I purchased my tool from DX Engineering.
*Lagniappe: (LAN-yap) “A little something extra.”