2016 JARC Hamfest Saturday !!

We hope to see you all there on Saturday! This is always a great event, with lot's interesting vendors and local hams buying, selling and having fun!

Here is a link to the post from last years JARC Hamfest !

And here is a link to the flyer for the event JARC Hamfest Flyer !

Great Breakfast Meeting

If you missed it, we had a great time. Good Coffee, good food and good friends. Look for plans coming up on the September meeting. Perhaps it will be cool enough to go to the park after the meeting? If anyone has ideas for a presentation, topic or special guests please send them our way!

The next meeting will be taken up by the Joplin ARC HamFest!! But we still have our weekly coffee at Spellbound on Wednesdays at 9am!

July Breakfast Meeting

SEKARC will be like old times this month, Our meeting Saturday July 30th will be 9am at Hardee's for breakfast! We will have lot's of radio talk (and some other topics mixed in) so bring something to talk about or your latest purchase or project!

We will also be discussing plans for the upcoming Joplin ARC Hamfest in August and potential plans for the fall. If you have never made it to a meeting but would like to meet the group, learn how to get your license we would love to meet you.

Great breakfast, great coffee and good times with fellow hams and soon to be hams! Too hot for the park, too busy for a formal meeting presentation so come on by and stay for 5 minutes or 2 hours!

SEKARC SLOW SPEED CW NET

The purpose of the net is practice for CW operators and to make us proficient if we ever have to use net controlled traffic. It is a SLOW SPEED net and is designed for the new CW operator and those of us who need the practice or are just learning.

Please try and keep your speed below 8 wpm.  Our operating frequency will be between 7.057 and 7.058 MHz .  I will try to use 7.057.5 but if it is busy QSY up or down between the above.  Let's have a good time and use the equipment that works for you.

Field Day 2016 Photos

Here are some photos from the 2016 Field Day at Big Brutus... you can click on the first one and start a slide show with larger images!!

Field Day Balloon Antenna

Be sure to watch the video below.....

Balloon Antenna Success
by Tyler Costantini KBØPQP

The balloon antenna worked very good what was surprising was the broad tuning range. The antenna was a 1/4 wave at 160m but we never measured the length we just used the antenna analyzer. It was first fed with a random wire tuner at the base that didn't provide a very good match. Next we just used a BNC to banana adaptor and put the wire right in the end of the 50ohm coax which lead to my MFJ 989c tuner that setup worked great. We could tune 160-20 no problem any part of the band and it seemed to radiate well. We put a 2mH choke between the radial and ground to act as a DC ground to remove static. I couldn't notice any change in the behavior of the antenna with the choke in place so I guess my math worked. It's 50+ turns in a FT-240 type 43 toroid.

Amateur Radio Field Day 2016

It is that time of the year again.... time to make your plans for Field Day 2016. The dates are June 25th and 26th. The last 3 years have been great from lots of heat and coyotes, to great thunderstorm watching and of course LOTS of radio contacts!

I will be operating a FT-817 using PSK and JT modes on 10 through 40 meters and I know of a few others are planning to setup and we will be finalizing our plans over the next few weeks as the event will be here quick!

We will have lots of gear setup and please bring your own and get on the air all weekend of even a few hours! I requested our camping site reservation today. We will be out there setting up early on Saturday June 25. We will have a big screen room for shade and bug relief and lot's of room for other operators.

One thing I would like to see us do better is when someone comes out to setup for a few hours, let's work together to give them time on the bands and frequencies they want to operate on while the full timers stand by. I think we can work together to give everyone a chance to make some contacts and have fun as well!