ARES Exercise on Saturday August 29th

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.

Special Event Coming up

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.

FCC Universal Licensing System, Other Applications to be Down for Maintenance

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… Continue reading

Santa Barbara Triathlon Operators Needed

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.

Remember – HAMFEST THIS SUNDAY!

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.

New Club Net Topic

As an experiment, we will be trying a new topic for the fourth Wednesday of the month Club Net with the first one coming up on August 26, 2915. We will be having a mini club meeting type net where people will talk or be interviewed for 15 minutes, then we’ll have questions and discussion afterwards. Topics can be anything of general interest or of interest to ham radio operators. To start things off, Jerel will be interviewing Shackmaster Dave K6HWN about his past experiences as a jailor. This will undoubtedly be an interesting evening! Post expires at 8:31pm on Wednesday August 26th, 2015 but will still be available in the archives.