SBARC Summer Potluck Barbecue – September 10th 2023

We’re back on for this weekend! You are invited to join us for a good old fashioned summertime potluck barbecue. SBARC will host this years get-together at Stow Grove Park on La Patera Lane in Goleta just before it intersects Cathedral Oaks Rd. We will be in Area 3 This once-a-year SBARC event will be held on September 10, 2023, from 10:00 AM until 2:30 PM.  SBARC will supply delicious 1/3 lb. hamburgers and cheeseburgers with all the fixings for all SBARC members and their immediate families. For non-members, burgers will be $5 each. You are welcome to bring your own beverages and we will have cold sodas and water available for $1. Since this is a potluck, we are encouraging everyone to bring something to share. You can bring a salad, potato chips, beans, hot dish, cookies or other desert, whatever you like and whatever you have time for. We hope you will join us for a relaxing meal and take the time to catch up with old friends. Of course, we can always use a little help setting things up before the event and cleaning things up afterwards. If you have a little time we would surely appreciate your help. Please RSVP so we know how much food to buy. Call our message line at 805-456-K6TZ (456-5689) or send a message through our Contact Us link and let us know if you are attending and how many people you will be bringing. Hope to see you there! Post expires at 1:05am on Monday September 11th, 2023 but will still be available in the archives.

General Club Meeting – July 21, 2023

Last month we will had a presentation from Steve Waterman K4CJX about the SHARES program. The counterpoint of the SHARES program is Winlink, so this meeting we’re are going to learn a little more about it. Winlink has become the de-facto standard for emcomm groups everywhere. It allows you to send and receive email messages using HF or VHF radio. This meeting will serve as an introduction to Winlink, what you need to use it, and how it works. We’ll get into more details about operation at a later meeting. This is an in person meeting and will also be available on Zoom and YouTube. SBARC General Club Meeting Friday, July 21, 2023 at 7:30 PM (Doors open at 7pm) Goleta Union School District Board Room 401 North Fairview Avenue in Goleta Zoom Details:  Topic: SBARC General Club Meeting – July 21, 2023 Time: July 21, 2023 07:00 PM Pacific Time  Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82807008137?pwd=dzhEL1BUTnNOK3FwL0RVdnRUdzA3UT09 Meeting ID: 828 0700 8137 – Passcode: 325046   Post expires at 1:00am on Saturday July 22nd, 2023 but will still be available in the archives.

General Club Meeting – June 16, 2023

This month we will have a presentation from Steve Waterman K4CJX. Steve is going to talk to us about the SHARES program. The SHARES (DHS CISA) high frequency (HF) radio program provides an extremely resilient means for users with a national security and emergency preparedness mission to inter-operably communicate when landline/cellular communications and the internet are unavailable. SHARES member agencies use existing HF radio resources to coordinate and transmit messages needed to perform critical functions, including those areas related to leadership, safety, maintenance of law and order, finance, and public health. SHARES provides the “E” in PACE (primary, alternate, contingency, emergency) planning for communications. About Steve Waterman: “Officially” retired (from network design/consulting company) Williamson County, TN – COMU Reserve Tennessee Emergency Management Agency COMU/ESC Active Member: FEMA RECCWG R, 4, 5, 10 FEMA R4 RECCWG AuxComm Subcommittee, Chair Co-Founder of Winlink: Immediate past president of ARSFI (non-profit that funds/runs Winlink operations) Currently on ARSFI BOD & Winlink Development Team Winlink Administrator for all services HANDOUTS – Be sure to download BEFORE the meeting! Meeting Handout: https://sbarc.org/Downloads/handout-6-23.pdf SHARES program Article:  https://sbarc.org/Downloads/shares_program.pdf For More Information, visit the SHARES Website: Click Here   This is an in person meeting and will also be available on Zoom and YouTube. SBARC General Club Meeting Friday, June 16, 2023 at 7:30 PM (Doors open at 7pm) Goleta Union School District Board Room 401 North Fairview Avenue in Goleta Zoom Details:  Topic: SBARC General Club Meeting – June 16, 2023 Time: June 16, 2023 07:00 PM Pacific Time  Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89047716328?pwd=QkNFR3hSRFdnLzFYMmMrcG8yN2NtZz09 Meeting ID: 890 4771 6328 – Passcode: 739530   Post expires at 11:00pm on Friday June 16th, 2023 but will still be available in the archives.

SBARC Summer Potluck Barbecue – September 15th 2019

You are invited to join us for a good old fashioned summertime potluck barbecue. SBARC will host this years get-together at Stow Grove Park on La Patera Lane in Goleta just before it intersects Cathedral Oaks Rd. We will be in Area 2, the same location as last year. This once-a-year SBARC event will be held on September 15, 2019, from 9:30 AM until 2:30 PM.  After last years success, we decided to keep the same format this year. SBARC will supply delicious 1/3 lb. hamburgers and cheeseburgers with all the fixings for all SBARC members and their immediate families. For non-members, burgers will be $5 each. You are welcome to bring your own beverages and we will have cold sodas and water available for $1. Since this is a potluck, we are encouraging everyone to bring something to share. You can bring a salad, potato chips, beans, hot dish, cookies or other desert, whatever you like and whatever you have time for. We hope you will join us for a relaxing meal and take the time to catch up with old friends. Of course, we can always use a little help setting things up before the event and cleaning things up afterwards. If you have a little time we would surely appreciate your help. Hope to see you there! Post expires at 1:05am on Monday September 16th, 2019 but will still be available in the archives.

Field Day 2019 – Saturday June 22 thru Sunday June 23

This year we’re putting the “Field” back in Field Day!  We will be operating from Elings Park up on the hill where the hang gliders take off. We will be operating from 11:00am Saturday until 2:00pm Sunday, and we still have several time slots to fill, so we would really appreciate your help. We need three volunteers per time slot, two to operate the two stations (morse code [CW] and voice [SSB] this year), and one to help with outreach to the public (answering questions, etc).  We also need people to help set up before-hand, and help break-down at the end. Operating/outreach time-slots are four hours long (but if you can only do something less, we’ll still fit you in).  We are considering visiting a restaurant for an early dinner after the event Sunday – stay tuned!  Your club needs you! Let’s make this a fun field day for everyone. We will bring the Rover to just above the hang gliding area at about 10:00am on Saturday, June 22.  We will need a small crew to help assemble di-poles and erect antenna masts and pop-ups. Check out the ARRL Field Day intro and the ARRL Field Day Rules for more information.  If you want to follow along closely with field day activities, please subscribe to the field day mailing list. You are more than welcome to work a 4-hour operator shift and a 4-hour outreach shift, if you so desire, or even take two operator shifts at different stations and/or times (lowering the need for as many total volunteers). Feel free to mix it up and hang out. If you can help out in any way, please contact us immediately, and let us know what hours you are available. Ideally, we’ll be filling shifts for these seven time slots: 11am-3pm, 3pm-7pm, 7pm-11pm, 11pm-3am, 3am-7am, 7am-11am, and 11am-2pm, but again, let us know when you can help, and we’ll fit you in! Post expires at 8:00pm on Sunday June 23rd, 2019 but will still be available in the archives.

SBARC Annual Bazaar – This Coming Saturday, July 21, 2018

The annual SBARC Bazaar will be held this year on Saturday July 21, 2018. Setup will begin at 06:00 to 07:30 with selling to begin at 08:00 and continue to 11:30. Donated equipment that has been collected throughout the year will be sold to raise funds for the club. There will also be a consignment area where you can bring items you want to sell if you like and the club will accept a 10% “commission” from those sales. The Bazaar this year will be held in the parking lot at the Club Station in the Red Cross parking lot. It will be fun to have it “at home” again this year, and the Club Station will be open during the entire time. The Red Cross building is located on the corner of State Street and Alamar. The parking lot behind the main building, and the entrance is on Alamar. We will need help and people with pick-up trucks and/or hand trucks to move the equipment and set things up and clean up afterwards. Sales people are also needed. Please contact Brian K6BPM at k6bpm@sbarc.org if you can spare an hour or two. Your time will be greatly appreciated and it is for a good cause! Post expires at 12:35pm on Saturday July 21st, 2018 but will still be available in the archives.

Field Day Report From Ken KA6KEN

Dear SBARC Members, I would like to thank all those who attended Field Day this year.  The turn-out was fantastic. Elings Park was a bit cold and we never did see the sun, but perhaps that was better than hot and dusty (isn’t it amazing how it went from cold and overcast two weeks ago to 107 degrees last week)? We had two stations running (plus the Get-on-the-Air, or GOTA, station).  We used our K6TZ call for the primary two stations and K6SBZ for the GOTA station.  Our class was “2A” and our section was “SB”. We assembled and installed the massive Force-12 antenna on a rotator atop the 50′ pneumatic mast on the Rover along with an 80-meter dipole, we set up the two-element StepIR on a push-up mast (that was a feat) along with a 40/80 meter dipole, and we erected three fiberglass masts with guy ropes to support a G5RV multi-band center-fed di-pole antenna as an inverted-V at about 30′ at its center-point. Our total score was 2,236, comprised of 553 QSO’s (multiplied by 2 since we used less than 150watts for all QSOs) plus 1,130 bonus points.  For more details (like bonus points break-down), click here and download the file called “ARRL Field Day Entry Form as submitted.pdf” (note you must add the Total Bonus Points to the Claimed Score for the final score).  If you want to find out more about comparative scores check out the ARRL web site for last year’s scores; this year’s scores will not be published until November.  Also, check out the ARRL Contest Soapbox by clicking on and selecting “2018 ARRL Field Day” in the Event drop-down for pictures and comments people have posted regarding Field Day – they are still streaming in. The band conditions were not as bad as predicted.  We actually had some pretty solid runs.  In fact, the team of Dennis WB6OBB and Jim N6SXB managed a rate of 128 QSOs per hour, at their peak!  While Dennis is a seasoned contestor, this was Jim’s first; Jim was logging for Dennis.  Congrats to the dynamic duo!  Now if we could only sustain that rate, we would have scored 12,288 points in 24 hours across the two stations (including our 2x multiplier for running on emergency power).  We all have something to work toward next year! We made 273 QSOs on 20 meters, 214 on 40 meters, and… Continue reading