What’s happening at SBARC? Here you will find the latest club news, events, projects, net activities, and news from our special interest groups (SIGS).
Be sure to check in frequently so you don’t miss out on any of the interesting things going on with the club and its members!
We have moved content for the Technical Mentoring and Elmering Net here, and content for the Digital Modes Net here.
The Amateur Radio Parity Act H.R. 1301 is in jeopardy of not passing into law unless the U.S. Senate acts to pass it before the holiday recess. This may or may not directly affect you now but ensuring access to reasonable antennas for amateurs across the nation supports the health of our hobby and ensures that all amateurs will have on-air capabilities, especially in an emergency.
CLICK HERE to send emails to Sen. Boxer and Sen. Feinstein. Let them know that you want them to pass the Act NOW:
H.R. 1301 has already passed the U.S. House of Representatives and has the endorsement of the ARRL and the American Red Cross. It is now up to the U.S. Senate to send the Act to the White House.
Here’s what ARRL has to say about the matter:
ARRL once again is calling on its members to urge their US Senators to support the Amateur Radio Parity Act (H.R. 1301) when it comes up in the Senate during the “lame duck” session of Congress that adjourns in mid-December. The House of Representatives approved the bill in September, but if the Senate does not follow suit, the bill will die, and the entire process will have to be repeated. ARRL Hudson Division Director Mike Lisenco, N2YBB, who chairs the ARRL Board’s Legislative Advocacy Committee and has been heavily involved in efforts to move H.R. 1301 forward, said today, “The clock is ticking!”
Did you know that ARRL CEO Tom Gallagher, NY2RF, is a member of SBARC?
Tom Gallagher, NY2RF, of West Palm Beach, Florida, succeeded David Sumner, K1ZZ, as the chief executive officer of ARRL on April 18, 2016 . He oversees all activities at ARRL Headquarters in Newington, Connecticut.
Licensed in Pennsylvania in 1966 as WA3GRF (and later N4GRF in North Carolina), Gallagher is a member of the West Palm Beach Amateur Radio Group (and the Santa Barbara Amateur Radio Club). He describes himself as “an incurable HF DXer and inveterate tinkerer” and credits his first visit to the Franklin Institute’s Amateur Radio station W3TKQ in 1963 for inspiring his interest in ham radio.
Amateur Radio led to an early career in broadcasting. He was a cameraman and technician with WGBH-TV in Boston, the CBS Television Network, and Metromedia’s WIP Radio in Philadelphia.
He joined ARRL following 3 decades as an international investment banker and financial services executive. His career has included senior leadership positions with JP Morgan Chase & Co and CIBC Oppenheimer & Co in New York, and with Wachovia Capital Markets in Charlotte, North Carolina. He has also served as an adjunct professor at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and as CEO of the Secondary School Admission Test Board in Princeton, New Jersey. Gallagher has served on boards, both public and non-profit, including two NYSE companies, the NPR affiliate in Charlotte, the Executive Board of The PENN Fund at the University of Pennsylvania, and The International Center of Photography.
Gallagher graduated magna cum laude with a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, and he holds an MBA from The Wharton School. He is a graduate of The Lawrenceville School, where he held the Nicholas Noyes scholarship.
In addition to ham radio, Gallagher enjoys saltwater fishing and sailing which, he confesses, is sometimes just an excuse to operate maritime mobile.
Editor’s note: Biography info credit ARRL website.
[Darryl – KF6DI] The November 18, 2016 SBARC Club meeting will be a Triple Header. First, this will be our Sixth Annual Home Brew night. Bring whatever you have that you had a hand in — designing, building, modifying, running — all will count. Put something in writing next to your entry to let us know about what you did. You can even demonstrate it.
Second, this will be our chance to vote for those whom we want to serve SBARC on our Board of Directors for the year 2017. A slate was proposed at our October Club meeting and can be found on here. Nominations will also be accepted from the floor from those in good standing for those in good standing, should they accept the nomination, in addition to those nominated last month. Be sure to bring along your SBARC membership card so we can quickly verify your eligibility to vote.
We have two guest speakers who will honor us and inspire us with a most interesting program about Novim, the group formed at the University of California campus in Santa Barbara to create a collaborative problem-solving approach to address widespread and complicated problems, modeled after approaches at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP).
Michael Ditmore, W7HUT, who is multi-term Past President of SBARC and is the Executive Director of Novim, began his business career with IBM as a systems engineer. After receiving an MBA from Stanford in 1970, he relocated to Germany as Director of European Operations for Canberra Industries. Following the sale of his division in 1972, he returned to California, joining a startup – ROLM Corporation, where he served as regional manager for marketing and sales. The company was sold to IBM in 1979. Michael subsequently founded and sold 2 high technology medical device companies.
In 1995 Michael co-founded and served as Chairman and CEO of the Systems and Software Consortium, a non-profit association of 150 companies whose first project was the creation of the Pacific Technology Center in Goleta, the largest high tech incubator in southern California at the time. Michael currently serves on the Director’s Council of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at UCSB, and is a life member of both the USAF Academy Association of Graduates and the Stanford Alumni Association. He is a past member of the Board of Directors of Junior Achievement of California; the Executive Board of Santa Barbara Partners in Education; and the Stanford Business School Alumni Association. He also served on advisory boards for the NASA Ames Incubator and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Jim Knight, WA6RNV, also a long-time member of SBARC, Novim’s Executive Vice President, was a co-founder in the start-up of Amber Engineering, Inc. in December of 1981. Over a period of twelve years the company grew to 200 people and was acquired by Raytheon Company in 1992. He retired as Senior Vice President in 1994. Jim and three other partners subsequently started Indigo Systems Corporation in March of 1996, which grew to 230 employees before being acquired by FLIR Systems in January 2004.
Jim served for 5 years as a member of the Board of Directors of the Santa Barbara Chamber of Commerce beginning in 1993 and later in a supporting role with the Government Relations Committee. Jim currently serves on the Director’s Council of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at UCSB, and is co- chair of the Government Relation Committee for the Goleta Chamber of Commerce. He served on the Board of Directors of UCSB’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Engineering Management and currently serves on the steering committee for the South Coast Business and Technology Awards dinner sponsored by the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara.
We meet 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. Guests are welcome!
Post expires at 9:00pm on Friday November 18th, 2016 but will still be available in the archives.
Bob – K6CTX, SBARC’s Rovermaster has assembled a list of local go-to frequencies to consider scanning, especially during special events, emergencies or disasters. This is intended to be a starting point for the most active local frequencies of interest and not necessarily a comprehensive list of all possible public safety channels.
Click here to view the SBARC Repeater-Scanner Frequencies Sheet in Google Sheets format. From there you may copy/paste or download the file for local manipulation.
Submitted by Bill – W1UUQ – Seldom in ones lifetime do we get very close to royalty. Outside of a small group of like professionals I try to avoid any political event or pomp with any head of state. That is until I served in the upper NE corner of Thailand on the Laotian border in the mid 1960’s. On a few occasions the King of Thailand, Bhumibol Adulyadej, made visits to NE Thailand for official ceremonies. As part of the Military Advisory Group (MAGTHAI) I would have access to official Thai events and invited to attend as a foreigner (falang) with the military. The King was granted HS1A in 1989 but as far back as the mid 1960’s we knew the HS1A call sign was always reserved for the King. During the mid-sixties ham radio was out of bounds within the local population except for a small number government officials and ex-pats, mostly Americans. As Fred Laun, K3ZO, points out in the ARRL release the King would get on 2 meters only. I operated as HS3WT (my initials) along with a handful that kept ham radio going even though it was not recognized by the ARRL. The war in SE Asia was in full swing as the US built up the Thai regional forces supporting US Forces in Vietnam and the so called secret-war in Laos. Radio was always viewed with great suspicion by local officials regardless of affiliation so it was best to have close contact with local military officials. But as Americans if you had an official US military or government connection it made the process much easier. There was no reciprocity with the US during this period.
The King and I were both about the same age and both of us were born in Massachusetts. If I ever had the opportunity to speak with the King there was plenty to talk about. Usually I would team up with Don Riebhoff, K7ZZ/HS3DR, (now deceased). Typically a local ceremony in this region was void of any press or foreigners although a US Embassy official would be represented. These events were strictly for the Thai people and it was best to simply remain unseen in the background and stay quiet. The King in military uniform and his wife Queen Sirikit would usually arrive in his Avro twin at the UdonThani Royal Thai Air Base then helicopter to the local event. Udon RTAFB was a joint operation of US military and the CIA supported Air America group. I never got to meet the King personally but was granted close access to get some rather interesting pictures. King Bhumibol was a most revered King and loved by the people while ruling a Constitutional Monarchy. Thailand emerged out of the Vietnam War unscathed thanks to the US presence under the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and the handful of special ops teams at MAGTHAI. Today, after 40 years, the Thai military can hold its own along with a regional commitment by the US. However, periodically Thailand erupts into chaos be it the military or civilian leadership over control. King Bhumibol was always able to settle issues. It is now problematic if Thailand will remain stable as internal forces within the royal family and challenges by the political and military leadership will realign itself and shape the future.
Enclosed are just a few of the many pictures I took during visits by King Bhumibol of Thailand. Note how the people must be at a kneel and solemnly quiet. All this appears like a storybook setting of pomp or a movie production.
Sawadee
Bill Talanian, HS3WT
Click here king-bhumibol for photo album
King of Thailand Bhumibol Adulyadej, HS1A (SK)
Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX), HS1A, died on October 13,
after a long period of declining health. Born in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, while his physician father was at Harvard University,
the king, whose name translated as “strength of the land,
incomparable power,” was 88.According to noted DXer Fred Laun, K3ZO/HS0ZAR, the king “was never
very active on the air, and, to my knowledge, the only QSOs he ever
made were from a handheld on 2 meter FM.” He said HS1A was often
“pictured using a handheld.” He also was pictured with a camera, as
photography was one of his passions, and he was a jazz enthusiast,
who played the saxophone.The Radio Amateur Society of Thailand (RAST), the country’s IARU
member society, said on its website that the king was “presented the
call sign HS1A by the Ministry of Communications at Chitrlada
Palace” in 1989 in a ceremony witnessed by RAST officers. He was the
ninth monarch of the Chakri Dynasty, having ascended to the throne
in June of 1946, and was the world’s longest-reigning monarch.
SBARC Mesh Network Map
Thanks to some very hard work by Eric KG6WXC, and with some help from Levi K6LCM, we now have a live, near real-time map online that displays the status of our mesh network.
Each mesh node has settings where the node owner can enter their station coordinates, and many users have done this. Eric devised a way to poll the network and read the coordinates and other details about each node and display them on a map. Then he went further, and calculated the link quality between nodes and displays that as a color coded line on the map.
This is a great addition to our network toolbox and a fun thing to check out. We can see how the network is performing at in a visual, easy to understand format. Check it out here!
Post expires at 8:19am on Wednesday November 30th, 2016 but will still be available in the archives.
Looking northwest from Santa Ynez Peak.
Thanks to the efforts of the Telecommunications Services Committee, we are testing a new link between the Santa Ynez Peak 2-meter club repeater (W6YJO) and the main 146.79 2-meter club repeater (K6TZ) at the La Vigia/Mesa site. This link will allow participants in North County to join the many nets on the 146.79 repeater and more easily engage in QSOs with hams on the South Coast.
Here are the details:
146.79- PL 131.8 in Downtown Santa Barbara is now linked to 145.18- PL 131.8 on Santa Ynez Peak. Both are standard negative offsets (600 KHz). Give both linked repeaters a try and see which one you can get into best!
At this point, this link is a beta test. We hope to have it up full time during the test but there are no guarantees. If you have questions or experience any problems, please contact us.
