Blog Posts

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

It all starts with YOU!

1/18/2018

On behalf of all members of the San Francisco Radio Club (SFRC), past and present, thank you for your support of amateur radio.

SFRC started over a century ago, driven by individuals with similar interests. They came together then, as we do now, to learn together and from each other. We encourage interest in all aspects of the hobby, and to aid our community.

Thank you for providing me the honor of serving as President for the 2018 year, and for providing a stellar collection of leaders to serve with on the Board of Director. We look forward to continued growth, building on the strong foundation of the oldest continuously operating amateur radio club in the world.

The Board of Directors met recently to discuss the coming year, and are pleased to present the following objectives for 2018:

Secure 501(c)(3), aka “nonprofit”, status by the end of 2018. This will serve to strengthen the future of the club, by encouraging greater asset donations, and providing more resources to serve the community.
Increase membership and member participation. We are developing a definition of membership, underscoring the benefits, towards improving affiliation and retention rates.
- Discounted club materials and services (i.e. name tags; license examination fees)
- SFRC equipment loan library
- Monthly newsletter
- Priority access to club sponsored events
- Eligibility to apply for lifetime membership
- Free classified advertising on SFRC website
Increase awareness of SFRC and its function throughout San Francisco and the greater Bay Area.

None of this is possible without each and every one of you. We still need and want you to share your interests and ideas. More importantly, we need your participation, not just at the meetings and events, but also in the continued development and growth of our club. We see our role as the elected leaders is not to impose, but to facilitate.

We look forward to seeing you throughout the year, at all of the SFRC events!

1st General Meeting of 2018: Friday Jan 19th

1/15/2018

Rachel Kinoshita moved from Oregon to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1989 to work for a start-up email software company and has spent most of her career working in the messaging industry. She now spends her time fighting spam, malware and phishing attacks.
Rachel (KK6DAC) is still a newbie to ham radio, having only gotten her license in early 2013. Although like many things, Rachel jumped in with both feet and soon got her general license, an HF rig and starting exploring the world in the low bands.

At the same time, she found herself working with her local Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) to help develop and shape their communications plans and policies. She also found her way to the South County ARES (SCARES) organization where she developed an interest in emergency communications.

As part of becoming proficient in emergency communications, Rachel began researching alternative emergency power methods, including solar, generators, different types of batteries and what works best for a particular application. In this presentation, Rachel will be talking about batteries, the real world
testing she has performed with them and how it applies to ham radio.

Holiday Party Photos Request

1/15/2018

Dear members,

We are looking for photos from our Holiday Party to post to our website.

If you have attended our Holiday Party at the Basque Cultural Center last December and have taken photographs of the event, would you mind sharing a copy with us by emailing us at: sfradioclub@gmail.com

Kind Regards

The 2018 Board

Message from our 2017 President

11/23/2017

Anthony Dowler (K6BV)

With an eye on the future of San Francisco Radio Club, I am excited to congratulate Nick Powell NF1P on becoming President for 2018. I know that he and the newly elected Board will continue to safeguard the history and traditions of our esteemed organization while we continue to grow into the 21st century.

I am looking back at the ten years that I have had the honor of serving as your President. My first year (1984) was certainly a learning experience, considering that I was only licensed in 1981. I took a long hiatus from radio (1990-2008). I am not sure why, but, I came back to my senses in 2008, returning to the club and helping out as Secretary. At the time it seemed to me that participation was at a low and when given the nod to, once again, serve as President I made it my goal to restore involvement. My vision for the SFRC included expanding our presence in the community, forming an education base and empowering our members to truly feel that this is their club. It has been and always will be an organization driven by your combined effort and ideas.

Over these years I have been blessed with some gifted and inspired members of our Board of Directors. Additionally, having a few of them repeat as Directors and Officers has helped establish a consistent formula that successfully maintains the programs and services we offer and allow for continued growth. Read more

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