Activities

The bunny is again hopping.  It has not been well for a while and several things had to be replaced and repaired.  It is now ready for Saturday, July 17th.  We are having a bunny hunt with summer time treats as the prize for everyone that participates.   A Bunny Hunt is the ham radio version of hide and seek.   The bunny will be hidden and everyone is invited to find it by homing in on its signal.  The Bunny operates on the 2 meter band allowing anyone with a 2 meter handheld to join in on the fun of locating it.

Here are some tips when using only your 2 meter handheld.  To get a direction bearing, a simple method is to use “body shielding”.  Hold the handheld radio close to your body and orientate yourself so the handheld is receiving the signal.  Then slowly turn until the signal bars or the audio level is at its lowest level.   At that point, the direction of the transmitter is directly behind you.  If you have full bars on your handheld meter or the signal volume is not changing as you rotate, try tuning 5 or 10 KHz away from the bunny’s transmitting frequency and/or removing your antenna.  (Remember; do not transmit with the antenna removed or on the bunny frequency.)  This will usually attenuate the received signal enough to give you usable information.  The more in the clear, away from obstruction and sources of reflections (cars, metal fences, etc.), you are the more consistent and reliable your bearings will be.  Once you get a direction bearing, move a distance to either side of the first bearing direction and obtain another bearing. This will give you a triangulation of your two directional bearings that give a general direction and area of the bunny.  Sometimes signal reflections can give you false directions, so you may have to do several directional bearings from different locations as you try to locate the bunny.

Check in:  An announcement will be given on the 146.640 repeater at 2:45 PM.  Those participating, please check in with bunny hunt control.  The 146.640 repeater will be used during the bunny hunt for general questions and help.
Hunting area:  The bunny will be placed somewhere South of 2500 North.
Bunny Frequency:   144.700 MHz (Simplex).   
Start Time:  3:15 PM.  The bunny will be turned on and it transmits for 30 seconds out of every minute.  The starting location is where ever you are when the bunny is turned on.  If you don’t hear the transmission, drive to a different location and listen again.  Towards the end of the search time, a call will be given on the 146.640 repeater for anyone needing help in locating the bunny so we can all be together for the treats. 
End time:  5:00 PM.   Treats will be served near the bunny's hiding location.

Those of you who will be using beam antennas be prepared to tell us all about your beam antenna and your setup for transmitter searching.

Come join in on the fun of hunting for the bunny and enjoy some ice cream, watermelon, and cold pop.

It's getting closer to LOTOJA time! September 11th
You can keep up to date by checking this page regularly: www.barconline.org/LOTOJA
Right now some information is still from last year but it will be updated as info becomes available.
 
For more information on LOTOJA go here: www.lotojaclassic.com

UPDATE:  The Sinks Road is still closed and the Forest Service indicated that it would not be open by June 26.  The BARC Field Day will be at the alternate location on the Swan Flat road.  The map has the Swan Flat location noted.
 
It’s June and BARC will have its annual Field Day event at the end of the month.  Our club will be participating in the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) 2010 Field Day event on Saturday June 26th and Sunday June 27th.  Field Day is an annual amateur radio exercise, encouraging emergency communications preparedness among amateur radio operators.  It is typically the largest single emergency preparedness exercise in the country, with over 30,000 operators participating each year.  Field Day is part educational event, part operating event, part public relations event.  But most of all, we have a fun and enjoyable time operating the radios. Anyone can attend and participate, licensed or not, club member or not.  You can operate a radio (with a control operator present) in making contacts to other amateur radio operators.  If you want to listen and not operate, you can help with logging the radio contacts on a computer.  We use this opportunity to let everyone try HF.   We will have several radios setup, including one radio for digital mode, (PSK, RTTY, etc.) and one for Morse Code (CW).

--- UPDATE --- 

Here are the category results of the 7th Call Area QSO Party that our club, W7IVM, participated in on May 1-2, 2010.  We took second place in the Multi-Single Low power (mutiple operators, single radio, and <150 watts) catetory.

7th Area Multi-Single Low
                       CW   PH DIG
Call      Score  Mlt  QSO  QSO QSO QTH   Operators,..

K7LED      60424  56  281  118   0 WAKNG N7WA,KD7IQL,KM7F,KF7FYE
W7IVM       8424  26    0  162   0 UTCAC AC7II,AE7EI,KE7IK,KE7TAS,KE7WAV,
                                         KF7ATL,N7RXE,N7WAT,WA7MXZ
K7RDG       1128  12    0   47   0 AZCHS KD7OED,W7OL,KB7SKY,KB7SKZ
NM7D        1056  16    0   33   0 UTWSH

We all had a great time.  Many thanks to those who help in the contest and those who stopped by.

-------------------

7th Call Area QSO Party -- May 1-2, 2010

Our club, using the club callsign of W7IVM, will be participating in the 7th Call Area QSO Party (7QP).  It begins at 1300 UTC Saturday to 0700 UTC Sunday (7 AM Saturday to 1 AM Sunday MDT).  We will be at the club ham shack on the USU campus.  Directions to the BARC Ham Shack from downtown Logan.  Take 4th North towards USU and turn left at 1200 East.  Take the first left onto 700 North.  Then take the first left onto Bullen Hall road.  Park in the lot just north of the Engineering Laboratory Building (ENLAB).  From the parking lot, enter ENLAB at the northwest corner.  Go up to the second floor and to the southwest corner of the building near the breeze way that connects to the Science Engineering Research (SER) Building (west of the ENLAB).  The Ham Shack room is next to the entrance of the breeze way. 

 
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This is a list of the BARC Public Service Activities and a brief description of each...