Hello fellow BARC member. This is a page I’ve created to keep everyone up to date on what’s been happening within the club and what’s going to happen in the coming months.
First off, let’s talk about what events we’ve held in the past few months.
- Back on December 20, we had our Christmas party at Ricky’s with 26 members and 2 plus ones. The club provided 1 non-alcoholic beverage and 1 dessert. The door prize was an IC2100 won by Antonio. Joe won a one year membership to the club. Alfred provided some gift cards, won by Antonio and Reg. Believe it or not, all the winners were seated at the same table.
- I gave a talk on HamClock one Saturday at the church. HamClock’s developer is now a silent key and two separate groups are working on new backend servers. I also discussed two other options, OpenHamClock and HamTab. Information can be found on the library page of our website, at https://www.ve7bar.org/library/
- Ron, VE7COR gave an interesting talk An Introduction to Smith Charts at a coffee meeting.
- I brought an HF radio into the club to make some contacts during Winter Field Day.
Coming Up in April – June
- The Vancouver Sun Run is coming up on April 19th with several club members volunteering as radio operators around the course. Information can be found at https://www.ve7bar.org/events/
- On April 20 several members will be going to Edmonds Community Centre to check on and test the club emergency station that we haven’t had access to since before covid. More on that later in this email. While there I’ll be running the Monday night net from that location.
- Some members will also be helping out at the Hyack Parade on May 23rd. You can find more info on that on the website’s event page
- Father’s Day Walk Run for Prostate Cancer on Father’s day, June 21st . This event takes place every year around Burnaby Lake. I haven’t received the information for this year yet but we will be looking for 10 – 12 radio operators. Keep checking back on the events page
- Field Day June 28th – 29th. More than likely we’ll be at Cariboo Park again. Check back.
Other Items Discussed at our Business Meetings
- Over the past several months we have worked on issues with the website regarding calendar integration and notification email when people fill out a membership contact form. The club calendar is now operating properly on the web site and we replaced the old forms with Google forms. This fixed the issues.
- Google spreadsheet is current and live with club members as they renew membership.
- Web hosting is paid through to Dec 2027.
- The club purchased 4 hi-viz vests with club “Burnaby Amateur Radio Club” printed in all caps on the back. These are for loan to club member’s during events.
- Volunteer hours are important to the club should we apply for government grants. The club also wants to promote volunteers and acknowledge event participants with a certificate and possibly other perks. We created a form so members can log their volunteer hours, ve7bar.org/vh.
- We had to cancel the March swap meet. The Cariboo Salvation Army was going through renovations and wasn’t available. We looked for another site but couldn’t find anything big enough for 25 tables at a reasonable price. We’ve rescheduled for November 14th and have sent an email to the Salvation Army requesting that date.
- We have formed an Equipment and Repeater Subcommittee with Ward, Doug, Ian and Youngli
- We have redistributed the equipment that was previously stored upstairs at the church. Some equipment is now on loan to the Salvation Army’s CRU communication vehicle that we have access to for events.
- We also have an IC756 HF radio with a display issue that Yongli is repairing. Once that’s fixed it will be matched up with a club power supply I have for use at the church on Saturdays.
- Ward met with the city officials. The city strongly & positively reacted to our interest for deeper involvement. They have invested in the antennas and want to see the site re-invigorated. The current manager is retiring and new staff are very motivated to work with us and want to know what they need to do to help. Ward has had access to the equipment cabinet and taken photos. The equipment is stored now in their super secure IT closet, and we can bring it out into the hall anytime. The antennas are terminated in a locked wall box in the Music room which is scheduled for regular use and access will have to be coordinated with Edmonds. They will allow us free access to the equipment for practice and exercise at the site at least quarterly.
- Future potential to move our repeaters to Edmonds. Ian did some modelling of repeater coverage. Standing on the roof Ward observed horizon to horizon view. This will give good local coverage, but not as good as our current Seymour site. Meshcore repeaters, would be another future addition.
- As mentioned earlier, several of us will be visiting Edmonds on April 20th to test the equipment and run the Monday night net from the site.
- We’re looking at offering club golf shirts for sale with the club logo and your call sign embroidered on them. We’ll be sending out an email soon to let you know the cost and giving you a link to our website merch page where you can place your order. We’ve decided the club will cover $15, which will be around 1/3 of the cost of each club member’s shirt. We’ve also talked about giving away 3 shirts as door prizes at the swap meet and maybe something for our Volunteer of the Year. Special thanks to Jill for taking on the task of Merchandise Director and our Secretary Doug who’s making all the mass email integration possible.
- Doug has created several more email templates that have been set up including a volunteer hours email, hidden web page and responses form.
- Doug announced a pending mail out for BARC ERT with a new membership application form. This will be for people wanting to join the BARC Emergency Response Team. Training will eventually include the Edmonds Emergency Radio Site and The Salvation Army’s CRU Emergency Communications Vehicle.
- Don, Brian and Lawrence spent a couple days out at the Salvation Army Emergency Communications Centre in Abbotsford reorganizing their radio equipment.
- Jad is creating a BARC banner to hang on the CRU when we have it out at events. He’ll also have BARC stickers available.
That should bring everyone up to date on what’s been happening in your club. I’ll send another email in July.
Dave Kennett, VE7BBV
President, Burnaby Amateur Radio Club