San Francisco Radio Club

SFRC February Meeting is this Friday, May 18th at 7pm

5/17/2018

Join us tomorrow night (Friday, May 18th) at 7:00pm at the V.A. Hospital, building 7 Auditorium (2nd floor) for our monthly San Francisco Radio Club General meeting.

- Our May meeting is dedicated to our members. The format will be several 5-10 minute show and tell sessions. Do you have a home-brew project to show? A topic of interest to discuss? A gobox to show? Bring your project over and share your knowledge with us!

Some of the mini sessions include Building a 10Mhz GPSDO by Lucas W6AER, SSTV reception and decoding by Antonis AA6PP, Echolink setup by Antonis AA6PP, A SOTA gobox for 20m etc.

- Tomorrow night we will also be discussing our upcoming SFRC Field Day event, preparations are underway and we need your help!

- Finally as always, this is our chance, once a month to meet each other in person, socialize and have fun.

1st Annual SFRC SOTA Activation - Great Success!

4/26/2018

Earlier today, May 12th, 17 of us hiked to the top of Mt Tam and activated Peak W6/CC-063. Everyone had fun, learned something new, helped each other and made enough contacts to become an Activator. One of the highlights of the day was achieving a Summit to Summit activation! AA6PP managed to have a QSO with K7ZOO activating Arizona's W7A/SC-006 Peak. Good times! Until next time!

Summits on the Air Information

Join the SFARC mailing list

3/19/2018

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SFRC February Meeting is this Friday at 7pm

3/14/2018

This Friday, Tim Fairbairn, AF6TF, will be presenting on the topic of "Operating Summits On The Air (SOTA)". As an avid hiker and passionate radio operator, Tim will guide us through the journey of combining nature trailing and the art of portable operation!

Tim has been into electronics since the '70's, Junior College in the early 80' and got Technicians AS degree in electronics. He worked at Intel during his early college years and in several electronics related jobs. Currently he is working in the audio/video industry where he is managing the wireless microphone frequencies for many customers!.

Tim played with CBs in the 70's and 80's but due to work, family and community commitments he took a break. When his kids entered college age it was time to get back into the hobby. He initially passed the technician exam and was awarded KJ6RNN. He upgraded to general the following year. After convincing his spouse to join the hobby he also decided to aim higher and get his extra ticket. His new callsign was AF6TF.

"I was looking for ways to operate while outdoors so when Bay-Net offered a simple hike to a local peak in a park, I was all in. Packed up my IC7000, and 40A/H battery and some long wires I had, basically taking my home station outside! I learned very quickly that the right choice of equipment and backpack weight were key."

Join us this Friday evening to learn what it takes to elevate your radio operation!

Time to renew your membership

3/13/2018

March is membership drive month. The San Francisco Radio Club is now 101 years old. The oldest club in the USA operating continuously since 1916! We need every bit of your help and support to keep our club going. Your time, your ideas, your participation and your money are greatly appreciated.

Once more this year we kept the membership fees at the same rate of $25 per person. We encourage you to take a minute and renew your membership online today.

This year we are also introducing a life membership package with pricing based on age. Members get priority access to SFRC participating events, have the ability to advertise (radio equipment) for free via the club website, have access to SFRC equipment loan library and more. So please support our club, renew your membership or donate today!

Buy your 2018 Membership

SFRC Equipment Library - New Member Service

3/12/2018

No, it is not someone else's gobox. It belongs to our club. The awesome KX2 HF radio is now part of what we call the "San Francisco Radio Club Equipment Library".

This is a dream coming true and a great benefit for the SFRC club members! In fact we have now in our possession three goboxes to loan out to our members! An HF KX2 gobox with a packtenna, a FM FT-60 gobox and a C4FM FT-70DR gobox! All in beautiful Pelican cases, self contained ready to operate!

We are working hard to finalize the logistics around our equipment loan program but DO attend our Friday general meeting to see these goboxes up close. Over the next few weeks we will be updating our website with the loan program details.

Tonight: General Meeting Talk-In NET

2/16/2018

Let's make heading to our monthly meetings interactive!

We are implementing a new Talk-In/Travel NET before our General Meetings. At 6:45pm and until our General Meeting commences we will be taking checkins on our Sutro Tower 2m Repeater: 145.150 Mhz DCS 664 (info here).

Bring your radios with you and lets make traveling to the meeting fun!

Tonight's Presenter - Kenneth W6KWF

2/15/2018

In our February general meeting, tonight, Kenneth Finnegan, W6KWF, will be presenting on "Building a Communications System from Scratch: Providing Communications Support for the Wildflower Triathlon"
The Wildflower Triathlon is one of the worlds largest triathlons in the world, and requires an extensive communications system to run smoothly every year. Despite being located at Lake San Antonio where there's only one cell phone tower and a single amateur repeater in range, the Cal Poly Amateur Radio Club and its alumni take on the challenge and deploy a communications system with half a dozen voice repeaters, an entire stand-alone APRS network, and a multi-console Computer-Aided Dispatch center.

WiresX Connect/Disconnect Instructions

2/15/2018

Our 2m repeater is WiresX capable. This means that you can connect it to distant repeaters, nodes or even reflectors (such as the America Link, MNWIS etc) and enjoy conversations often many thousand of miles apart. Our 2m repeater puts us on the map!

Nevertheless this powerful feature can get in the way of running normal analogue FM NETs if not well understood. Here is what I mean; when our repeater is connected to a distant node it is connected in digital mode only. But our repeater can support both FM (analogue) and C4FM (digital) transmissions as it has been purposely set to AMS mode (automatic). Both transmissions can coexist (in serial mode). So it is very important that when we run our FM only NETs to disconnect our repeater from any distant WiresX nodes first. Equally it is important to let local digital users know that an analogue NET is about to begin.

To make it clear, it is the responsibility of the operator who connected the repeater in the first place to disconnect it when we have a scheduled FM NET or when he/she has finished interacting with other stations or monitoring.

Connecting to a WiresX Room

Disconnecting from a WiresX Room

Volunteers Needed - Feb 4th/2018

2/2/2018

35th Annual Kaiser Permanente SF Half Marathon & 5K

The San Francisco Radio Club has been invited to manage the Communications Team for the 35th Annual Kaiser Permanente San Francisco Half Marathon & 5K. We will appreciate your assistance for this event, our inaugural year of participation.

More Information & Volunteer Registration

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