President’s Message

Hello fellow BARC member. This is my second quarterly email to update you on club activity.

First off, let’s talk about what we’ve done in the past few months.

  • The Vancouver Sun Run was held on April 19th with several club members volunteering as radio operators around the course. We had $200 donated to the club thanking us for our continued participation.
  • We’ve been to the Edmonds Community Centre twice to check on and test the club emergency station that we hadn’t had access to since before covid. On April 20th we ran the Monday night net from there using the club’s equipment on site. Be found the UHF/VHF antennas to be useable, but the 40/80 trapped dipole had hi SWR and the beam showed an open circuit. We went back a couple weeks ago and found the dipole ends were down on the roof. We fixed that but we still need to go back with a safety harness to check the beam and see what it’s issue is. In the end we’re looking at replacing all the old coax.
  • A few members helped out at the Hyack Parade on May 23rdand several more helped with the Father’s Day Walk Run for Prostate Cancer on Father’s day, June 21st .
  • Field Day was June 28th – 29th. The club operated on Saturday at Cariboo Park. We had 4 stations going off and on, bbq’d some hotdogs and had a great time. Two of the radios in use were donated to the club by Don Menzies, more on Don later. Altough the bands weren’t that great due to solar flares I did manage 28 contacts on the IC7300 as far away as south Florida.
  • Doug has continued to expand the club’s use of Google WorkSpace with club email going out announcing golf shirt and Meshtastic orders using Google Forms and the webpage to facilitate ordering.
  • We have a date for our swap meet at the Cariboo Salvation Army gym. November 14th is booked and payed for.
  • The IC756 HF radio with a display issue has been repaired by Youngli and will probably be used at the Burnaby EOC along with an Alinco PS and a Comet HF verticle, another donated item from Don.
  • We’ve continued to be in contact with the City of Burnaby and rebuilding that relationship
  • We completed the golf shirt order with club members paying $35 and the club picking up the balance. Most have been distributed to members but I still have 6. You know who you are… Big shout out to Jill for organizing this one.
  • Jad created several BARC banners to hang on the CRU when we have it out at events. We also have BARC stickers available. Jad has printed several things for us in the past including nice club volunteer badges for the Father’s Day event.
  • We had 2 short wave radios donated by the same lady who was clearing out her husband’s equipment last year, 1 RCA Victor 1940’s vintage wood table top short wave and 1 1960’s Zenith Trans Oceanic SW. Both probably need new capacitors. Alex NSK purchased the Zenith for $100. We also have a second Trans Oceanic from Mr. Menzies.
  • I guess it’s time to talk about Don Menzies. Don use to be a club member and contacted me a couple months back and said he was doing some spring cleaning and had some items to donate to the club. It turns out these items included an IC7300, an FT857D, an Alinco PS, a Chameleon portable HF vertical, a Comet HF vertical, an MFJ antenna tuner, an oscilloscope and signal generator that several club member’s have been drooling over, the Trans Oceanic SW and more test equipment than I can list here. Don said he just likes to listen in now on this scanner and was looking for the equipment to go to a good home, which leads me to the next item, but before I move on, Don has been given a life time membership and a golf shirt as a sign of the club’s gratitude. Thanks Don.
  • OK, so what’s the plans for Don’s equipment…
  • As I mentioned earlier, the IC 756 we were going to turn into a “church” station is now going to Burnaby’s EOC. We’re repacing it with the IC7300, powered by the Alinco PS. We’ve also purchased a Pelican style case to store these items in and hope to talk to the new church pastor about some corner to store it in. Come the fall I hope to have it set up for use most Saturdays.
  • The FT857D, MFJ antenna tuner and Chameleon antenna are all going to be stored in the SA CRU as a mobile/roving station.
  • It was discussed at today’s meeting that we go through the test equipment and see what we should keep and store at Brian’s house that members could borrow as needed.

Coming up in the next few months.

  • We hope to complete the Meshtastic order, purchase and distribution.
  • August 29th we’ll be at Peace Arch Park for the 3rd Annual HAMs Across the Border, https://www.ve7bar.org/hams-across-the-border/. This is open to all amateur radio operators both sides of the border. Jim and Deb will be there from Bellingham, along with Mike and Janine from the island and so many more Rainbow Country Net NCOs… Spread the word. I want to see 100+ attendees this year.
  • We’re not going to have an executive or a business meeting in August, so back to business in September and making plans for the swap meet.

That should bring everyone up to date on what’s been happening in your club. I’ll send another email in October.

Dave Kennett, VE7BBV

President, Burnaby Amateur Radio Club