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Announcements
REGULAR CLUB MEETINGS RESUME MARCH 16, 2021
Due to member concerns about the COVID-19 virus during the winter peak respiratory virus season, we have not been holding regular meetings for a few months now. With the vaccine now being distributed to the most at risk, which includes many club members, we will resume regular club meetings beginning with the March 16 meeting.
I hope to see you there.
Rick Fletcher, W7YP
Introduction to Amateur Radio Seminar
Pass the word!
There will be a seminar on Monday, March 22nd from 6:30PM to 8PM at the Living Waters Foursquare Church. It's located at 2794 US Highway 93,Kalispell, just north of Reserve Street on the west side of the highway. We will meet in the north building.
This will be a two part seminar. The first part will be for prospective hams wanting to know more about Amateur Radio and what it takes to get licensed.
The second half will be short talks covering the "Next Steps" once you have your license. We'll talk about Amateur Radio Emergency Services and Amateur Radio as a hobby. We'll discuss the different types of radios, antennas, power supplies, coax cables and more. We'll cover what types of modes you can operate on the various bands.
There will be a "show-and-tell" of equipment including portable, mobile and base radios. You won't want to miss the live demonstrations of HF voice and digital modes in action! At the end of the demonstrations, we'll have a "questions and answers" period. Seminar ends at 8:00PM.
If you have suggestions to help new hams, or can help volunteer, please contact me for more information.
73
Lyndel Thiesen, N7LT
Home phone: 257-5117 (leave message)
email: n7lt,at,yahoo.com (remove the commas and insert @ symbol.)
Location
April 20 and May 18 Club Meeting Announcement
For our April 20 Flathead Valley Amateur Radio Club meeting I will be giving a presentation on DMR, a digital voice technology which has become quite popular within the ham radio community. The presentation will discuss the basics of DMR technology, the interconnection of DMR repeaters and reflectors over the Internet, and a review of some of the DMR radios available and their pricing. You will likely be surprised at the low price tag of some of the DMR offerings out there.
DMR is a great way for those with Technician Class licenses to expand their capabilities from being limited to using local repeaters to talking to other hams around the world via DMR’s massive network of interconnected repeaters and reflectors which cover the globe.
At our May 18 meeting, I’ll introduce “hotspots”. These are inexpensive devices ($80 on up) which act like little repeaters (typically low power in the 10-40mw range) and, using your home’s WiFi network, along with the appropriate handheld, enable you to talk to folks around the world using Yaesu’s System Fusion network, Icom’s D-Star, DMR and even P25. The presentation will include a demo of a few of the popular hotspots and how to acquire and setup your own.
For those wishing to use DMR, we have a DMR repeater in Bigfork, owned and operated by Neal Garbenis (NE7AL); so, it’s easy to get onto DMR once you get a handheld or mobile/base capable of DMR. You can find the repeater’s details on our club website.
This announcement was emailed to the club's current roster. If you did not receive that email and would like to receive future club email, please send me your email address using the "Contact" tab.
73,
Rick Fletcher, W7YP
AMATEUR RADIO LICENSE TESTING SCHEDULE FOR 2021
FVARC will host exam sessions for all classes of amateur radio license on the following dates:
September 21, 2021
November 16, 2021
Exam sessions will begin at 5:30 PM, just before our regularly scheduled club meeting at 7:00 PM.
Location:
Flathead County Office of Emergency Services
625 Timberwolf Parkway
Kalispell, MT 59901
For reservations, contact Ed at W7EFL@arrl.net
INCIDENT COMMAND SYSTEM TRAINING
Attention ARES members and others interested in the Incident Command System:
If you are interested in attending an upcoming FEMA class to satisfy the ICS-300 and ICS-400 requirements, please contact Dale Saverud at dale.saverud@gmail.com to be added to the list. Classed are in the process of being scheduled in the next couple of months and a count of interested people is needed by end of business 11/19.
Dale Saverud
Flathead ARES Assistant Emergency Coordinator
