SARA This Week Jan 24 – Jan 30

SARA gathers daily via on-the air nets and ragchews. We also gather virtually for the weekly SARA Eyeball QSO Party or Tech Topic Thursday session, the monthly General member, and Board meetings. Although we’d love to gather in-person, our current on-air and virtual gathering plan remains the best choice for the health and safety of all our members.

---

Ice-olation Station WØJH Special Event Feb 13 – 15, 2021

With a little pandemic-related “rebranding,” Ice Station WØJH has become Ice-olation Station WØJH. This year, in keeping with COVID-19 social distancing requirements, we will operate from our individual QTHs … not from frozen Lake Elmo as in the past. This marks the 8th consecutive year, the club is sponsoring and conducting this Special Event. Ice-olation Station WØJH will be on the air Saturday February 13, Sunday February 14, and Monday February 15.

All SARA members may participate,though we do suggest  Special Event or Field Day or contest operating experience to take part. By taking charge of “pile ups” where multiple stations are calling at the same time, it’s likely you could have 5 or more stations calling you at once! However, if you think you’d like to give it a try … please let Joe (KCØOIO), Bob (WØGAF) or Dave (WØOXB) know you’re interested. We can give you some pointers and steer you toward some times and bands that the rate of contacts is not as hectic. The WEBEX training session “New Ham Introduction to Operating SARA Special Events” is Thursday January 28th at 7:00 PM.  Although its name/title implies this is for “New” hams; the content is appropriate/meaningful for ANY of our members, young and old, wanting to learn Special Event operation.

We will again use the “Distributed Operating System” (DOS) format we developed for the Remembering the Edmund Fitzgerald special event. Each operator will be scheduled to participate from their own QTH. Each Op will have selected agreed upon time(s) when and where they can operate. Each Op must operate in accordance with their license class and use the club’s call sign, WØJH. We will have multiple stations simultaneously using the same callsign, operating on different bands.

An Operator sign-up page has been published via the online SignUpGenius service.  There are band/mode time slots starting at 8:00 AM CST (14:00 UTC) to 6:00 PM CST (0:00 UTC) each day. Operating bands include 80M, 40M, 20M & 15M  (depending on time of day & typical propagation characteristics) and modes are Phone, CW, and Digital. Contact KCØOIO at president at radioham dot org for further signup information.

---

General Class License online classes set to begin January 27.

SARA instructors are preparing to present online classes (via WEBEX) for the General Class license, beginning Wednesday January 27. If you are interested in upgrading your license, or you know of someone that would be interested: this is the class for you. The class will use the ARRL General Class License Manual 9th Edition as the study guide. The study guide is may be purchased online at the arrl.org or from Amazon. The class is open to any party interested in preparing upgrade to General Class. For more information, email Bob WØGAF at w0gaf at radioham dot org.

---

Technical Topic Thursday Session Video online now.