Category Archives: Club News

Help Support our New Emergency Mesh Network

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SBARC members are launching a new club project to install a multiple node mesh network system in Santa Barbara. In simple terms, a mesh network is a lot like a wide area, long range WiFi network for amateur radio operators. Any licensed ham can participate and all the hardware needed costs less than $100. To get the project off the ground, SBARC needs to install some initial nodes at strategic locations. Participating users will be able to connect from their stations to these nodes. This will be a tremendous asset to the club and to the community in general in the event of an emergency. To read more about it, and learn how you can help, please click here.

February 2016 General Club Meeting: Amateur Radio Mesh Networking

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Orville Beach, W6BI spoke at SBARC’s February General Club Meeting. Orville is a member of the Simi Settlers Amateur Radio Club of Simi Valley, Calif. who says he is now All Digital, All the Time! Orville spoke to the group about the success of digital mesh networking in Ventura County and encouraged Santa Barbara-area hams to join in the the fun of using 0ff-the-shelf wireless networking gear to create private IP networks using the exclusive ham allocation in the 2.4 GHz band. Listen to audio from his presentation below and learn more about the software his is using that is coming out of the Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network (AREDN) Project.  

General Club Meeting – January 15th 2016

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Our January meeting featured a presentation from Theo, KK6YYZ. Theo’s presentation included a slideshow that illustrated the installation of a home emergency power generator and he went over all the various considerations necessary for proper installation. His presentation was also punctuated by some lively discussion on electrical equipment grounding, electrical codes, and other good questions. You can listen to the audio part of the presentation below: Post expires at 11:12am on Friday February 12th, 2016 but will still be available in the archives.

General Club Meeting Coming Up January 15th

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For the first Santa Barbara Amateur Radio Club meeting of the year, the January 15, 2016 meeting will be a good one! One of our own members, in fact one of our Board members, Theo Howe, KK6YYZ, a local electrician by trade, will be giving us a wonderful presentation on “Installing a Home Generator system.”     Theo will be explaining: How to choose a system with features that are right for you Correctly sizing your Generator Permitting and Covenants Can I install this myself or do I need an electrician mckinney texas to sort this out? Choosing fuel type Interconnecting with your home electrical system There will be a Question and Answer period with Theo and Al Soenke, WA6VNN, a Past President of SBARC and one of Theo’s customers, who can speak from experience and will give valuable insight from the owner’s perspective. Our Club meetings are held 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. Bring a guest. Join SBARC or re-join SBARC. If your membership expired at the end of the year, this is the time to renew it for another full year of Amateur Radio fun! You may join or re-join SBARC by downloading the Membership Application or by filling one out at the meeting. Our annual dues are still only $24 per year. Post expires at 11:51pm on Friday January 15th, 2016 but will still be available in the archives.

Play Like the Big Guns – With Little Money

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Hello All, I decided to share the details of my HF station here on the SBARC website for a couple of reasons.  The primary reason is that maybe someone out there would find my setup useful in building their own station.  I am very limited by budget and space so I have to figure out ways of making the most of a little bit of everything.  For you HAMS that have $10,000 or more invested in your station, my little station will not compare to your capabilities.  Of primary interest in this article is my all-mode HF radio and the Pan-adapter setup. The first piece of the puzzle came into place about 2 years ago when I purchased the SDRPlay SDR (Software Defined Radio).  I got this before I even got my first ham license.  The radio itself is a marvelous piece of engineering.  It is a receiver that covers the range 100 KHz to 2 GHz continuously.  It has a great front end filter bank for anti aliasing. It samples at rates between 2.0 and 10.66 MSPS.  It has a 12 bit native ADC with a 60 dB SNR. Impressive specs for $150.  I originally was using this radio as a super scanner.  Its great for being able to browse around and see an 8 MHz band at a time.  It works well with all the popular SDR software packages out there, but it is married well with HDSDR.  The free HDSDR software can control the radio and performs all the demodulation you can imagine.  It handles AM, FM, SSB and Digital modes all in software.  It provides some impressive filtering capabilities including point and click notch filters.   You can read more about both by clicking on the following links;      http://www.sdrplay.com/           and         http://www.hdsdr.de/ After being a ham for about a year, I decided I wanted to play with HF.  Needing to stay small, in money and footprint, and after some missteps, I finally ended up with a neat little radio in the form of a Yaesu FT-857D.  This little radio does it all.  It is an all mode ham band 160 meter to 6 meter transceiver with 2 meter and 70 cm thrown in for good measure.  It puts out 100 watts on 160 to 6 meters and 50 watts on VHF/UHF.  Its small footprint made it an ideal choice for my needs. So, having these radios meant… Continue reading →

Chino Hills Swap Meet Changing Venues

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The old Chino Hills Swap meet is being replaced with other venues. The first one will be held at: Granite Creek Community Church 1580 N Claremont Blvd Claremont, CA 91711 The swap meet will be held in the parking lot adjacent to the Church, and the sole sponsor is the Claremont Amateur Radio Society. Please be respectful of your surroundings because this swap meet is in a residential location. Date: Saturday, January 16, 2016 Time: 6AM – 11AM NO Entry Before 6AM $10.00/space All Participants must have vacated the area no later than 11:00AM, No Exceptions.