Members of the Murray Amateur Radio Club participated this evening in an emergency services drill.  Assigned in groups of two radio operators, and equipped with either their own personal 1.25m band radios or radios provided by the Murray City Fire Department, members of the club dispersed to various locations around the city.  Arriving at their assigned locations, each team, using a tactical call sign, reported in to net control at the Murray EOC at station 83.  Each team was supplied with a simulated emergency condition which they reported to net control.

This exercise showed that the MARC members are capable of supporting Murray City in an emergency, passing messages from an on-scene incident commander in the event that normal communications channels are unavailable.  We demonstrated professionalism in our operations and followed our communications plan.

In other club actions, the membership ratified the new meeting schedule so it is an official club policy.  To reiterate, this is the three meetings a month schedule with the first meeting of the month devoted to Technician-related subjects, the second to General/HF-related subjects, and the third being the general monthly club meeting covering various subjects of interest to all.

If you haven't been to a club meeting lately, you should plan on joining us in October!

Due to a rash of spam account registrations (i.e. scripts trying to register for the site so they can post spammy comments on posts and pages), we have added a reCAPTCHA to the login and registration forms.  This will appear to you as shown here.

Simply click the box to confirm that you are a human.  In some cases (for example, your IP appears to have performed suspicious activity) you may be asked for further "easy for a human" activities such as identifying the contents of photographs.

As part of the ARRL Parks on the Air, our own AI3W (Rick) will be operating this Saturday, September 14th 2019, from 8:00 AM until 12:00 noon at the Antelope Island Marina (in the parking lot).  He welcomes anyone who wants to stop by.  Currently, Rick is planning on operating using SSB Phone and CW.

N7LCR (Ragnar) found some interesting cell phone apps... one of which being the eNIFOG (electronic National Interoperability Field Operations Guide).  The NIFOG is a listing of land mobile radio frequencies that are often used in disasters or other incidents where radio interoperability is required.  It also includes other information useful to emergency communicators.  The electronic version of this, eNIFOG, is an app that runs on Android or iOS (Apple) devices and contains all of the information in the physical document in an easily accessible and searchable format.

Google App Store (for Android)

Apple App Store (for iOS)

From those app store links,  you can find links to other related applications such as FEMA's reference app, The Red Cross's First Aid guide, and many many others.  We should all be taking full advantage of these tiny computers we carry with us in our pockets and purses every day.  These guides are designed to continue working even if the cellular network is down (they store the information directly on your device).

Members of the club have voted and determined that four+ meetings a month is too many.  We are restructuring the meeting schedule as follows:

First Thursday of each month:  Training Meeting on Technician-related Stuff... these will include things like wading through the Tech Test Manual and making sure we all remember why as well as which answers go to the questions on the Tech test.  There will also be lots of other topics that are primarily related to your Technician-class privileges.  If you are just starting with Amateur Radio, or you have had your license for a while and don't remember what to do with it, these are going to be great meetings to attend!

Second Thursday of each month:  Training Meeting on General-related Stuff... these will include things like wading through the General Test manual and either making sure we all remember why as well as which answers go to the questions on the General test OR helping us learn these things for the first time so we are ready to take a General Exam at some point.  There will also be lots of other topics that are primarily related to your General-class privileges, including things like what radios are out there, do you really need a giant honking antenna farm on your roof or in your back yard, etc.  If you already have your Technician license and want to get  your General, or if you already have your General and want to learn more about what you can/should be doing with it, come to these meetings!

Third Thursday of each month:  Official Monthly Club Meeting... these will include things like club business, matters of general interest to the club, guest speakers, DIY projects, etc.  Even if you are an experienced Extra-class licensee you should still try to make it to these meetings.