Category Archives: Club News

General Club Meeting – June 16, 2016

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We’ve had difficulty getting  presenter this month because of vacations etc, so we’re going to have a couple of demonstrations of new things we have added to our repeaters and infrastructure. We’ll also have plenty of time for general Q&A, suggestions, ideas, whatever. So come and be heard! We hold SBARC Club Meetings at the Goleta Union School District, 401 N. Fairview Ave. in Goleta, right across the street from the Goleta Library. Doors open at 7:15 PM and the meeting starts at 7:30 PM. Bring a guest! Post expires at 11:00pm on Friday June 16th, 2017 but will still be available in the archives.

Tracking Planes, Ships and Automobiles!

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Amateur radio operators were among the first to design products, build and maintain a digital RF tracking system. APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting System), is a digital communications protocol for exchanging information among a large number of stations covering a large (local) area. Bob Bruninga, WB4APR, a senior research engineer at the United States Naval Academy, implemented the earliest ancestor of APRS on an Apple II computer the early 1980s.  The first use of APRS was in 1984, when Bruninga developed a more advanced version on a Commodore VIC-20 for reporting the position and status of horses in a 100-mile (160 km) endurance run. Over the years, Legacy Landscape is helping out people to avail an exhilarating landscape experience.With that note we should also be aware that APRS has grown to include thousands of amateur radio APRS stations around the world tracking all types of vehicles and reporting weather from backyards to mountain peaks. SBARC has been a supporter of APRS, maintaining an i-gate and digipeaters for the system at our repeater sites. Today, commercial systems that function similarly to APRS are tracking many types of assets around the globe. The SBARC Telecommunications Services Committee also collects data from some of these systems including AIS for ships at sea and ADS-B for aircraft. Check out SBARC’s mapping and tracking systems: AIS MarineTraffic System ADS-B Aircraft Tracking APRS Amateur Radio Tracking   This page contains information from Wikipedia.    

The AllStar & EchoLink Playground is Now Open!

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The SBARC Telecommunications Services Committee has been hard at work rebuilding the club’s Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) repeater systems.  As part of the completion of the second phase of this project, the 70cm repeater VoIP playground is now open! Both AllStar Link and EchoLink systems are supported for incoming and outgoing link connections on the K6TZ 446.400 repeater. Local amateur stations can control the node over using DTMF commands to link to repeaters around the globe. Many hams may be familiar with EchoLink and IRLP, two mature ham radio VoIP systems that permit node-to-node and node-to-conference server connections. AllStar Link is a newer and very powerful radio linking system based on the open source telephone PBX software Asterisk. The AllStar network has grown tremendously over the past few years and lends itself very well to experimentation. There is a new section on this website with a short primer on the new VoIP system including complete documentation of the DTMF commands used to control the 70cm node. Read more and start experimenting in SBARC VoIP playground! Thanks in particular to Ludo, K6LUD for his work to become our resident AllStar Link and Asterisk guru!  

General Meeting – May 19, 2017 – Old Timers Night

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Old Timers Night is an annual event that occurs at our May SBARC Club Meeting on Friday, May 19, 2017. It is a special time where we can once more meet and greet our “most experienced” amateurs. These folks have paid their dues and are entitled to boast about all their experiences in the great hobby of Amateur Radio. This special Club meeting gives us youngsters a chance to be in the presence of some Amateur Radio operators who helped form our hobby, back when Spark Gaps were fading into history and AM modulation was first being used. Today we take things like repeaters and microphones for granted. We’re also having a special raffle this month. We’re raffling off a brand new Kenwood TM-281A 2m mobile radio. It boasts 65 watts of power, 200 programmable alpha-numeric channels and a front facing speaker. Kenwood radios are well known for their reliability and great audio. These radios are currently selling for $172.00 on Amazon, so come buy a few raffle tickets and you might be the lucky member that takes this home. This radio will be given away at the meeting, so someone will go home with a very nice raffle prize. SBARC General Club Meetings are held at the Goleta Union School District at 401 N. Fairview Ave. in Goleta, right across the street from the Goleta Library. The meeting begins Friday, May 19, 2017 at 7:30 PM but come early and look at all the old stuff your old friends have brought for you to see. Post expires at 1:00am on Saturday May 20th, 2017 but will still be available in the archives.

SBARC director joins ARISS Education Committee

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Levi C. Maaia to serve on Amateur Radio on the International Space Station U.S. Education Committee SANTA BARBARA, CALIF. – The Santa Barbara Amateur Radio Club has announced that Levi C. Maaia, a member of its board of directors and a Ph.D. candidate at UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, has been named to the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) U.S. Education Committee. The ARISS program provides learning opportunities by connecting students to astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) through a partnership between NASA, the American Radio Relay League, the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation and other Amateur Radio organizations and space agencies in Russia, Canada, Japan and Europe.  The program’s goal is to inspire students in the US and worldwide, to pursue interests and careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) through Amateur Radio. Maaia is a telecommunications executive and a former K-12 educator.  He earned his first Amateur Radio license in 2006 and presently holds an FCC General Class license K6LCM.  Maaia’s research at UC Santa Barbara has focused on STEM education in high school settings. He and his students at Anacapa School in Santa Barbara, contacted Astronaut Chris Cassidy during his stay aboard the ISS in 2013 via a scheduled ARISS radio contact (see video). “I am thrilled to join ARISS’s inspiring team of engineers, educators and innovators which has supported more than 1,100 contacts directly between students and astronauts,” said Maaia.  “ARISS provides incredible and inspirational experiences and is an important part of the space program’s educational outreach.” The ARISS-US Education Committee provides guidance on the educational aspects of the program. A few more educators will be named to the committee; those interested may write to k1sto@arrl.org.  Schools and other educational organizations may apply to host a scheduled contact with the ISS by visiting www.ariss.org. SBARC is a 501(c)(3) non-profit public benefit corporation organized to promote education for persons interested in radio telecommunications, to disseminate information about scientific discoveries and progress in the field, and to train communicators for public service and emergency communications. SBARC operates a wide-area network of analog and digital communications systems across Santa Barbara County and encourages and sponsors experiments in electronics while promoting the highest standards of practice and ethics in the conduct of communications. Media Contact: Levi C. Maaia, Director at Large Santa Barbara Amateur Radio Club

General Club Meeting – April 21, 2017

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If you are a regular participant or lurker to the Digital Communications Net on Tuesday evenings, you have probably heard us talk regularly about using micro-computers and micro-controllers like the Raspberry Pi and Arduino and other similar development boards. These capable little devices can do all kinds of interesting things that you can use in amateur radio, home automation, environmental monitoring, or just for general learning. An official Raspberry Pi or Arduino typically sells for about $35, but other options are available for as little as $5! This month we’re going to try to take some of the mystery out of using these devices and Brian K6BPM is going to explain how these devices work, what you can do with them, and how easy it is to get started. We’ll show you many of the boards currently available and even some that are not yet available to the general public. We’ll also show you how we use these with our mesh network and infrastructure. You’ll find out how to take your home brew projects to an entirely new level. We hope you can make it! We hold SBARC Club Meetings at the Goleta Union School District, 401 N. Fairview Ave. in Goleta, right across the street from the Goleta Library. Doors open at 7:00 PM and the meeting starts at 7:30 PM. Bring a guest and put the date on your calendar. Post expires at 1:00am on Saturday April 22nd, 2017 but will still be available in the archives.

General Club Meeting March 17, 2017

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We’re going to try a little something different this meeting. Rather than have a speaker, we are going to to have a Town Hall style meeting. Members of the Board of Directors will be there and we’ll answer your questions about what goes on under the hood. The club is doing a lot of interesting things, especially in the telecommunications area. We’ll do a couple of real-time demos and show you what we’re up to and how this work benefits the club. So bring your questions, ideas and concerns, and we’ll have an old fashioned meeting. We hold SBARC Club Meetings at the Goleta Union School District, 401 N. Fairview Ave. in Goleta, right across the street from the Goleta Library. Doors open at 7:00 PM and the meeting starts at 7:30 PM. Bring a guest and put the date on your calendar. Post expires at 11:59pm on Friday March 17th, 2017 but will still be available in the archives.