ARES will be conducting a Fire Watch exercise on Saturday August 29th, 2015. The exercise begins at 1000 hrs (briefing at 0900) and they will be using the K6TZ 146.79 repeater occasionally. Please try to limit activity on this repeater to short calls and be sure to leave plenty of space between transmissions for break-ins. For longer conversations, please use the 146.700 repeater.

Anyone interested in seeing what ARES does during an exercise is welcome to drop by the County Sheriff’s building where the big SBARC/ARES van will be parked.

Post expires at 3:57pm on Sunday August 9th, 2015 but will still be available in the archives.

The especially grueling Peer-to-Peak run is coming up on Sunday September 6th. It starts early in the morning and should be over by noon. Communications for this event will all be on 2m and we need volunteers with mobile or HT radios to man checkpoints along the route.

Participants in this event run from the pier at the Santa Barbara harbor, all the way up to La Cumbre Peak, a climb of almost 4000 feet! Because of the tremendous physical demands on the participants, it is critical that we provide plenty of operators to handle communications wherever they’re needed.

Contact Rick at rickwhtr@cox.net or if necessary by phone at 964-5440

Post expires at 12:59pm on Sunday September 6th, 2015 but will still be available in the archives.

From ARRL:

FCC website maintenance in early September will make the Universal
Licensing System (ULS), the Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS),
the Electronic Document Management System (EDOCS) and other public
applications unavailable for more than 5 days. The Commission said
the outage will begin at 2200 UTC on Wednesday, September 2, and
continue through the Labor Day weekend. The maintenance work should
be completed by 1200 UTC on Tuesday, September 8. During the ULS
outage, it will not be possible to file any Amateur Radio
applications.

“[M]ost Commission resources normally accessible through the
Commission’s website, including access to all electronic filing
systems and electronic dockets, will be inaccessible for the same
period, with the exception of the Network Outage Reporting System
(NORS), the Consumer Help Center (CHC), and the Disaster Information
Reporting System (DIRS), which will remain available,” an FCC Public
Notice said on August 20. “The Commission’s website will remain
available, but with reduced content and limited search
capabilities.” According to the Public Notice, the FCC will follow
its normal schedule of operation during the maintenance period, but
voicemail will be offline, and most Commission staffers will not
have access to e-mail. Static content webpages on the fcc.gov
domain, such as the FCC consumer guides, should remain available
during the outage.

The FCC will extend filing deadlines for all regulatory and
enforcement filings that fall during the maintenance period. Filings
due on September 2, 3, 4, or 8 now will be due on Wednesday,
September 9. “Except for the due dates specified herein, we are not
automatically extending the deadlines for any other comment or
filing periods that will be running during this time period, but
requests for extension of time will be considered consistent with
the Commission’s normal practice,” the FCC Public Notice said. “To
the extent the due dates for filings to which reply or responsive
pleadings are allowed are affected by this Public Notice, the due
dates for reply or responsive pleadings shall be extended by the
same number of days.”

In a blog, “Modernizing the FCC’s IT,” FCC CIO David Bray said that
with the world and the technology we use are changing rapidly, “the
information technology used by the Federal Communications Commission
must change as well.” Bray said the FCC has “made significant
progress to upgrade and modernize our infrastructure, and we
continue to work on modernizing the FCC’s legacy IT systems with the
resources we have available.”

“We understand that this temporary downtime before and during the
Labor Day Weekend may be inconvenient for some FCC stakeholders,”
Bray added.

UPDATE – We are still in need of 6 operators for this event. If you can spare 2 or 3 hours Saturday Morning, we really need you help!

Operators are needed for the Santa Barbara Triathlon on Saturday August 22, 2015. You can use your 2m HT or mobile.

Contact Rick KG6VLB by email at rickwhtr@cox.net or if necessary, by phone at 964-5440

Post expires at 7:24pm on Saturday August 22nd, 2015 but will still be available in the archives.

The annual SBARC Hamfest is coming up this Sunday between 10 am and 3 pm. Help is still needed for setup and cleanup. So come early or stay late, or both!

NOTE: Very warm temperatures are expected so we will be putting up canopies for shade and free cold bottled water will be provided!

Post expires at 10:00pm on Sunday August 16th, 2015 but will still be available in the archives.

Our club president Jay WB6RDV lost his wife last week. There will be a sympathy card at the club station on Saturday August 15th that everyone can sign. Please stop by and extend your condolences by adding your name to the card.

Post expires at 1:39pm on Saturday August 15th, 2015 but will still be available in the archives.