Meetings

Date:  May 8, 2010
Time:  10 AM
Location:  Cache County Sheriff's complex 3rd floor, 1225 W 200 N, Logan.

The Bridgerland Amateur Radio Club (BARC) meeting will be "Field Day 2010".
The ARRL Field Day on June 26-27 2010 is the single most popular on-the-air event held annually in the US and Canada.  Each year over 35,000 amateur radio operators gather with their clubs, friends, or simply by themselves to operate.

We will be giving an overview on Field Day.  What is Field Day, contest rules, our tentative operation location, schedule, what to say on the radio, what the exchange means, scoring, contest software, and other information.  If you have never been on an HF radio, don't let this keep you away.  Our goal is to let everyone operate on HF who wants to.  There will be others there to help you with operating the radio.  Last year, we had many technicians who had a good time operating on HF.  Field Day is a fun and enjoyable event for everyone.

Be sure to attend our May club meeting to learn more about our Field Day activity on June 26-27.  See your there.

Date:  April 10, 2010
Time:  10 AM
Location:  Cache County Sheriff's complex 3rd floor, 1225 W 200 N, Logan

The Bridgerland Amateur Radio Club (BARC) meeting topic will be “Amateur Microwave”.

Have you operated the high frequencies?  We mean the really high frequencies, like up above 1000 MHz.  If not, the BARC meeting on April 10th may be a chance to find out what it’s like.  We will have a presentation on microwave by a local microwave group from the Salt Lake area  (More about the group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/utahmicrowave/ ).   Learn about mountaintop expeditions to set new distance records, making an antenna with 40 dB of gain or more, and communicating on a light beam.  What bands are available?  What does it cost to get started?  How hard is it to build your own equipment?  What does it take to compete in the Microwave contests?  The groups will be answering these types of questions and showing of the commercial and home built gear.

Be sure to attend our April club meeting to learn more about operating in the microwave frequency range.

See you there.
 

Date:  March 13, 2010
Time:  10 AM
Location:  Cache County Sheriff's complex 3rd floor, 1225 W 200 N, Logan

The Bridgerland Amateur Radio Club (BARC) meeting topic will be "Amateur Radio Astronomy".   Dale Hooper will be our guest speaker.  Dale works at the Space Dynamics Laboratory and is a member of the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers (SARA).  

Radio astronomy is a subfield of astronomy that studies celestial objects at radio frequencies.  The visible light spectrum from stars is just a small part of the overall electromagnetic emissions of stars and other objects in the heavens.  With radio astronomy, astronomical phenomena that are often invisible in other portions of the electromagnetic spectrum can be studied to obtain a much clearer picture of stars and galaxies than is possible by means of optical observation.  Stars, planets, galaxies, clouds of dust and gas, and other matter in space are sending out electromagnetic energy all the time.  There are also other classes of objects, such as Radio Galaxies, Pulsars and Masers.  The radio frequency range of most importance to radio astronomy that can be observable from earth is approximately from 1 centimeter to 10 meters.

The world's second radio telescope was built by an amateur radio operator, Grote Reber, in 1937.  Amateurs use a variety of equipment, sometimes modified satellite receivers and dishes, to build their radio telescopes.

Be sure to attend our March club meeting to learn more about Amateur Radio Astronomy.  See you there.

Date:  February 13, 2010
Time: 10 AM
Location: Cache County Sheriff's complex 3rd floor, 1225 W 200 N,  Logan
 
The Bridgerland Amateur Radio Club (BARC) meeting topic will be "PC in the Shack".  We will be showing a selection of PC programs that are for the amateur radio operator that you can use with your VHF/UHF radio , HF radio, or just your computer.  Some of the programs are UI-View, Winpack, Winlink, Echolink, DV-Dongle, Ham Radio Deluxe, DXLab, VOAProp, Beacon Time Wizard, VHF Propagation Maps, and a few others.  We'll have some radios and computers set up.  We will give brief demonstrations of these programs so you know what they are and some of their features.
See you there.
 

Date:  January 9, 2010
Time: 10 AM
Location: Cache County Sheriff's complex, 1225 W 200 N,  Logan
 
The Bridgerland Amateur Radio Club (BARC) meeting topic will be on antennas, home brew and commercial.  Want to know how to build antennas using items such as coax, wire, pvc pipe, aluminum rods, copper pipe, and other parts?  Then be at our club meeting for some how to build information on antennas.  There will be presentations on making a G5RV and a dipole antenna for the HF bands, vertical VHF dipole, copper J-Pole VHF antenna, and a helical VHF antenna.  Will also talk about a home built hand held yagi UHF antenna and a commercial hand held VHF/UHF yagi antenna.  This will give you information so you can make your own antenna. 

Hope to see you there and then you can go home, build an antenna and get on the air. 

For those of you who got a new handheld for Christmas and need some help on operating and programming it, bring it along with its instruction manual to the club meeting.  We will have a session after the club meeting to help you with your new handheld radio.

All you Elmer’s out there….  Bring your HT programming stuff to the club meeting and help with the programming of the HT’s.