There was a 5.7 earthquake a little north of Magna this morning.  There have been several aftershocks.  We are asking all club members to check in either here (post a comment on this message) or via e-mail to the club.  Joey has advised that the city is okay, some minor water breaks, but nothing major.  No need for a club activation at this time.

Due to the COVID-19 (a.k.a. Corona) virus, it has been decided to suspend in-person club meetings at this time.  We will NOT be meeting on the 19th of March.  We will continue to have our weekly Sunday evening nets.

Best wishes to all and stay safe and healthy.  If you have been exposed to the virus, take appropriate action, including contacting your health care professional(s).  While primarily dangerous to the elderly, young, and those with compromised immune systems or respiratory disorders, the disease is not fun no matter what your health condition and you should avoid it if you can.  Wash your hands regularly with soap and water.

Given the shortage of items such as hand sanitizer, wet wipes, cold medicine, and other related products, you may want to experiment with making your own hand sanitizer.  This can be done quite simply by using a mixture of 2/3 rubbing alcohol with 1/3 aloe vera gel.  Keep it in a sealed container to prevent evaporation.  While helpful when soap and water are not available, hand sanitizer is NOT a substitute for proper hand washing.  Hand sanitizer kills some of the virus, but soap and water washes it away entirely.

Our glorious leader has made arrangements for us to be able to get ID badges.  Visit Ham Badgers to order your own badge.

Now, you'll notice that there are several color choices to choose from.  There has been some discussion on the club mailing list about everyone sticking with a common color scheme.  Given this, you might want to wait until a final decision on the "approved" colors has been reached.  Update:  we decided people should just get whatever color scheme they like, there is no recommended or approved color.

The badges are available in small, medium, or large and can be ordered with a pin fastener or a magnetic fastener.  See below for some example images:

Don't forget, our February monthly meeting on the 20th will not be at the usual location.  We will be visiting the Salt Lake Crossroads Amateur Radio club which is meeting at the Glendale branch of the Salt Lake City Public Library.  This meeting will start at 7:00 PM at the library and we will be treated to a presentation on WinLink, a mechanism for sending "e-mail" messages using amateur radio.

If you have a laptop, bring it to the meeting and you will be shown how to install and configure the WinLink software and will be able to practice sending and receiving some messages (via the TELNET protocol over the Internet).  If you have a radio with a TNC, bring that too and we'll try to get it set up.

Check out our Monthly Meeting event for more details including where and when, and even a map to the location.

There is a Slack group for Amateur Radio in Utah!

For those of you who have never used Slack before, it is an instant messaging platform that is widely used in corporate and private communications.  Slack provides a quick means of communication without the spam and noise of e-mail.  It supports multiple "channels" for communication, as well as direct messages between people and ad hoc groups.  Slack provides an online history, so you don't have to be online all the time to see what people have been saying.  There are also mobile apps for it that you can install directly on your smart phone device(s).

Invites to the Utah Amateur Radio Slack, and specifically to the MARC channel (#marc) have been sent to all club members listed in the current roster.  If you didn't get an invite and you think you should have, please contact Jan (KD7ZWV).

If you got an invitation but you don't want to use Slack, don't worry about it... you can simply ignore the invitation.

The general club meeting for December 19th has been cancelled.  We will resume regular club meetings in January.  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I have added links for CircuitLab (the circuit designer/simulator software that was demoed at the 14 November 2019 meeting) and also a link to the home built 2m radio project for any who might be interested.