Last Saturday, 20 or more club members made the trek to the site of the Calgary Sports Car Club’s Winter Rally, NW of Cochrane. Given the driving conditions on Highway 40 and the Hunter Valley road this required a 1½ to 2 hour cautious drive from Calgary. The in-position target was 07:00. When combined with the “spring ahead” time change it made for an early rise. As our Australian hams would say, “Good on you mates”!
Murphy’s law: “whatever can go wrong will go wrong “ applied to the early stages of setup and resulted in moving Net Control to simplex when both the primary repeater and the backup repeater proved unreliable. Undaunted, but prepared for the unexpected, Net Control persevered and moved to 146.52 and carried on. With the passage of time and more daylight the original repeaters were then used to coordinate efforts for the subsequent stages. “Kudos to all,” for their adaptability and persevere in the face of uncontrollable circumstances. Amateur radio at its best, when as Robbie Burns wrote; “ The best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry”.
Racing conditions proved equally challenging to the rally teams. A number of unintended off-road outcomes occurred. While there were no serious injuries Robin Greig, VE6RBN, in the ambulance role of radio operator experienced first hand the importance of good organizational planning and the commitment of volunteer’s expertise, time, and efforts to ensure the safety of all involved.
Next up on the scheduled events is the Spring Flea Market. It is Saturday, April 8th at the East side Church. Seller, buyer and learning Conference information is available on the Upcoming Events section of the CARA Home page.
This year’s flea market has the usual offering of amateur radio treasures for redistribution. So if you are relatively new to the hobby the flea market is a place to get started on building your first station and connecting with others to enhance your amateur radio journey. For the not so new there will be old boat anchors to rummage through and reminisce about as well as an endless variety of parts for the current project or the ones on the drawing board.
The Calgary Amateur Radio Association is again offering attendance incentives. A 50/50 draw will be available under Alberta Gaming license # 460298 for which we have 500 tickets available @ $2 per ticket. There are two transceiver prizes with 300 tickets @ $5 and 900 tickets @3 for $10 available under License 460305.
Radio World Central http://radioworldcentral.ca has graciously donated a Yaesu FT-891 radio. This 1.8 to 54 MHz mobile transceiver is valued @$950. CARA is providing the second radio, a Yaesu FTM-100DR for the 2 meters and up attendees interested in both the digital and analogue modes. It is valued @ $450.
Personal attendance of the winning ticket drawn at the draw location, East Side Church in SE Calgary at approximately noon is required for awarding of prizes.
At our last Board Meeting we discussed some ideas for this year’s ARRL Field Day the last weekend in June. The last 2 years we went out to High River and joined the FARS club at a location on the south side of town. On the 3 previous years we chose rural locations. This year we thought we should look at setting up for the 24-hour operational period within the city to make it easier for members to attend and to enhance the awareness for this facet of amateur radio. In the past we used the parking lot on the East side of the Sunridge Mall one year and Glenmore park for another.
If you are new to the Field Day event just go to: ARRL Field Day 2017 and find out all about it. If you are a past participant and want to get in on the organization part we are now in the process of setting that opportunity up. A member is needed to take on the role of Field Day Director. This role coordinates the place, process and people to enable a whole lot of fun while building operational experience to be of assistance when mother nature or some other event calling on us for assistance. Look to the CARA Site in a couple of weeks for more information and details as they take shape.
The last item for this time concerns progress towards further linking of CARA’s VHF repeater facilities. An initiative is underway to determine which site(s) are candidates for linking in the upcoming spring through fall window for site access. More detail will be provided in the next President’s Message.
That’s it for now; see you at the Flea Market next month.
Gordon, VE6TI
