Category Archives: Club News

SBARC Assists With Fiesta Parade Communications

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A yearly tradition for SBARC, we are providing communications for Santa Barbara’s annual Fiesta Parade! Left, is special events operations coordinator Rick KG6VLB (facing backwards?) riding along with Parade Marshall 1. This year marks the 91st anniversary of the Fiesta Historical Parade. It is unique to Santa Barbara and features floats depicting episodes from the history of the state and city. Descendants of local Native Americans, Spanish Pioneers, the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West, and local service clubs and organizations all reenact historical scenes. It is one of the nation’s largest equestrian parades, featuring over 600 horses, as well as many antique carriages, coaches and wagons. SBARC members and other amateur radio volunteers monitor the parade route from the beginning to end from the west end of Cabrillo Boulevard, up to State and Sola Streets. Photo by SBARC member Dorothy K6DSO.

Santa Cruz Island Camera Back Online

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The Santa Barbara Amateur Radio Club operates a web cam at Diablo Peak, located 2,474 ft above sea level on Santa Cruz Island, off the coast of Santa Barbara. The camera is an Axis P5522-E pan-tilt-zoom camera with a resolution of 704×480 pixels.  The camera was offline for several months but access has been recently restored. CLICK TO VIEW LIVE IMAGES The images are captured at the peak and transmitted to the mainland over two 26 mile and 32 mile links using 802.11g WiFi technology. Images are captured and transmitted every 10 minutes during daytime. Enjoy!

Quadcopters and Repeaters

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Haydn KK6OYV might be one of our youngest members, but he is way ahead of the rest of us in bringing the true spirit of “homebrew” to the hobby. Last year, Levi K6LCM launched his DJI quadcopter in the club station parking lot with a small “store and forward” repeater attached. That repeater would hear a transmission, store it and rebroadcast it. It was an interesting experiment and after getting used to the delay, was a lot of fun. Haydn took this experiment way further. He incorporated a fully functioning lightweight cross-band repeater designed by Bob KK6EYV, and he built the quadcopter from scratch using various components he found afters hours of research. The quad’s frame is strong and and durable and the motors were selected for weight and performance. It lacks the sophisticated electronics and GPS capability that high end quads like those from DJI have, but is more than makes up for that in power. It can climb to 400 feet in just a few seconds and Haydn’s piloting skills more than compensate for the electronics in the DJI that make those machines easy to fly. Haydn suspends the small repeater from about 8 feet of fishing line below the quadcopter. The repeater dangles a length of wire that acts as the antenna. The repeater itself runs off a 9 volt battery. This is a big improvement over the original 12 volt design from last year. It has squelch and other adjustments on board that allows Haydn to fine tune the circuits, almost literally, on the fly. It actually works! Speech is clearly audible the repeater performance is just as you would expect from a repeater. We had some issues with interference so work will continue to find frequencies that work best. Haydn’s great ideas don’t sit idle on the workbench. He builds them and makes them work. For him, the sky’s the limit. Post expires at 5:23pm on Tuesday August 4th, 2015 but will still be available in the archives.

SBARC Participates in Field Day – SB Independent Article

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Story and Photo by Michael Stout -Tuesday, July 21, 2015 Late last month, the Santa Barbara Amateur Radio Club (SBARC) took part in the annual “Field Day” contest, using their technical skills to make radio contact with stations worldwide.

 Volunteers cycled through different positions inside the club’s station — identified by its Federal Communications Commission (FCC) call sign, K6TZ — in an attempt to establish contact with as many different places as possible. Contacting the maximum number of stations is one of the two main goals of Field Day. In total, SBARC made 91 contacts on 40-, 20-, and 15-meter bands. Read the full article at the Santa Barbara Independent site. Post expires at 1:35am on Saturday August 15th, 2015 but will still be available in the archives.

July 2015 General Club Meting

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Many thanks to Rebecca Anderson of the American Red Cross for get great presentation on  “Be Red Cross Ready.” Rebecca specifically focused on the types of emergencies we might face in Santa Barbara and explained how we can prepare ourselves in advance so that we can survive the first few days of an emergency on our own. No matter how well we think we are prepared, we can always learn something new. We certainly did this night. Virtually everyone walked away with additional knowledge as well as some great handouts from the Red Cross. The full audio is available in the General Meeting Audio Archives section. Post expires at 7:15pm on Saturday August 1st, 2015 but will still be available in the archives.

2015 Bazaar Big Success

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Darryl, KF6DI – Thank you to each of you good folks — Eric Satterlee, KG6WXC, from Port Hueneme; Bill Gross, W6FF, from Goleta; Bill Talanian, W1UUQ, from Goleta; Harry Rouse, K6PDQ, from Goleta; Ken Alker, KA6KEN, from Goleta; Bob Muller, KB6CTX, from Santa Barbara; Dorothy Oksner, K6DSO, from Carpinteria; Rick Whitaker, KG6VLB, from Santa Barbara and Tom Saunders, N6YX, from Goleta — we had a fun, successful and profitable Bazaar! Starting many weeks ago with the gathering of Junque for our sale from as far away as the Satellite Amateur Radio Club’s Swapfest and Barbecue, from our Club Station at the Red Cross and from homes around the area and moving a whole lot of it from our Club’s storage container Friday afternoon and then actually taking it home with us overnight and then bright and early Saturday morning bringing it all over to the Goleta Union School District and unloading it from our vehicles and laying it all out in the rear parking lot there in a pretty orderly fashion and then continuing right into selling of much of it to our Club members and visitors so that they might enhance their collections, somehow we actually cleared around $1,250. Hey, that’s pretty good for a Saturday morning. It even outdid last year’s effort. You know, if it weren’t for each of you pitching in and helping in whatever manner you did, this wouldn’t have happened. You were all terrific and I want you to know how much I appreciate what you did. So much of what makes a successful event is often unseen by the members. But that’s fine. I have always felt that the ones having the most fun were the ones who rolled up their sleeves and pitched in for the effort. It was a very nice day. The weather was delightful, the doughnuts were delicious, the drinks were cold and the coffee was hot. Without naming names, you each helped out in your own way and we all appreciate what you did. I got a bit of sunshine on me which felt good. Around noontime you might have seen Mr. John Moon stuffing what looked like tons of unsold test equipment into his van to be carted off to parts unknown. For that he crossed our palms with a couple hundred bucks. Pretty good for stuff no one would want. For many years he has come to… Continue reading →

General Club Meeting – Friday, July 17, 2015

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Rebecca Anderson of the American Red Cross, will be presenting a very special program for the Santa Barbara Amateur Radio Club at our July 17 Club meeting. Rebecca oversees preparedness programs for the Red Cross. Her presentation will be called, “Be Red Cross Ready.” The Red Cross Ready Adult Presentation is a 45 minute presentation covering the three steps to preparing individuals and families at home and in the workplace to 1) Build a Kit, 2) Make a Disaster Plan, and 3) Be Informed before, during and after a disaster. We often become complacent about such things if we haven’t experienced an emergency situation in a long time. Now is the time to get ourselves up to speed on these issues because the next emergency could be just around the corner. At 5:30 PM we will be taking Rebecca and some of her team members to dinner at Cody’s before the meeting. Please come and join us for dinner. Post expires at 1:00am on Saturday July 18th, 2015 but will still be available in the archives.