Category: Meetings

The January club meeting will feature an interactive presentation on HF and VHF propagation by Fred K2TR.

Meeting location:

Saratoga County Fire Training Center, behind the animal shelter at 6010 County Farm Rd, Ballston Spa, NY gathering and socialization at 6:30 PM with the presentation at 7:00 PM on Monday January 13, 2025.

Meeting Location

Fire Training Center
6010 County Farm Road
Ballston Spa, NY 12020

GPS coordinates

Latitude: 43.02140
Longitude: -73.872770

The October meeting was held at the “Warming Hut” located within the Saratoga Spa State Park on Monday October 14th.

Mike K2ZIP sets up the club IC-706 as Fred W2EMS, right back, explains how to operate a POTA. Joe, left, KD2ODA, getting ready to operate.

Photos by W2EMS and K2LM

Hey, here is something to shake up your club meeting experience in October.

Our meeting will be on Oct 14, the usual date, but the meeting will be something we have never tried before.  Since Oct 14 is a holiday, and people do not have to trudge to the office, we have decided to hold a daytime meeting instead of the normal nightly meeting.

We thought we would hold a POTA (Parks on the Air) activation along with a Fox Hunt at the Saratoga State Park.  We will meet at 1 PM in the Warming Hut at the park.  That’s just off of the Avenue of the Pines entrance right by Route 9.    One of our experienced activators will set up a station and we will get a chance to see a POTA station in action.

Simultaneously with this event we will tote out the club’s Fox, and have it pinging away if anyone wants to explore looking for it. Just a note, we are doing this in the “free” part of the park.  You do not want to go into the park via the toll booths, as you might get unnecessary charges for park entry.

Hello all,

Hope you all are doing well.  It’s time for the monthly SCARA Meeting.  It will be a Zoom meeting, this Monday Feb 14.  The business meeting will be held starting at 6:30 PM, and the general meeting will start right after that, at approximately 7:00 PM.

The February SCARA Meeting Program will be on Winlink presented by our very own Fred – W2EMS.

Winlink Global Radio Email®️…

…is a network of amateur radio and authorized government-licensed stations that provide worldwide radio email using radio pathways where the internet is not present. The system is built, operated and administered entirely by licensed “Ham” volunteers. It supports email with attachments, position reporting, weather and information bulletins, and is well-known for its role in interoperable emergency and disaster relief communications. It is capable of operating completely without the internet–automatically–using smart-network radio relays. Licensed Winlink operators/stations use both amateur radio and government radio frequencies worldwide.

It should be interesting to see.  I’m sure that Fred will wind in the emergency communications aspects of Winlink.

March Meeting – Swapfest

Also, here is an important announcement, our March Meeting will be our annual swapfest meeting, to be held live and in person on Saturday March 19 starting around 8 AM at the Cornell Cooperative building, at 50 West High Street, in Ballston Spa.  We anticipate a VEC test session Starting at noon.  There will be further information coming in this later.

Check your email for the Zoom link for the February meeting.

Jim KG2H

Hello all,

I hope that everyone is doing well and had a Happy New Year.

The board has decided to resume meeting via Zoom due to the dramatic increase in COVID cases in the area.  The board meeting will start at 6:30 PM, and the general meeting will be immediately after that.  Here are some items we might discuss:

• Develop programs for our monthly meetings in 2022
• Plan for the March SwapFest (COVID permitting)
• Plan for our Hamfest (COVID permitting and assuming that W2BEW doesn’t rescind his retirement as Hamfest Chair)
• Coordinate Field Day 2022
• Organize at least one special event station this year (maybe in October and related to the Battle of Saratoga or maybe one related to Track season).
• Identify new public service activities that SCARA can be part of.
• Increase our ARES footprint and publicize our capabilities more than we have.
• Other events/activities of interest to the membership

See your email for the Zoom meeting information for Monday evening, Jan 10.

I hope to see many of you on the screen .

Jim KG2H

Hello all,

Just a reminder, This Monday night, April 12 is the monthly SCARA meeting.  The business session starts at 6:30 and the General membership session starts at 7:00 PM.

The topic for the meeting will be :

Ham Radio Apps for Everyday Use

With the right apps your smart phone becomes a handy tool for the ham radio operator.  Some of the best ham radio apps will: help you locate repeater information as you travel, transforms your smartphone into a HT, provides tools for decoding messages, allows you to predict satellite passes in real time, search call signs on the go, plus a whole lot more.  Ham radio apps can and will enhance your enjoyment of the ham radio hobby.

This presentation will include demonstrations of several apps that are available for iOS and Android devices.  Live demonstrations will be shown via Zoom. Applications that may be featured include: RepeaterBook, QRZ.com, APRSDroid, EchoLink, SATSAT, AmSatDroid, and SSTV.

I hope to see you all there.

Jim KG2H

[See email from KG2H for meeting Zoom link]

Hello All:

Good News. in the last newsletter, there was an article announcing the cancellation of the April club meeting. Since that time, our ARRL Division Manager Ria Jairam, N2RJ has offered us the use of the Hudson Division’s license to present our meeting online via the ZOOM app.
This is an app similar to Skype or Google DUO, or a number of other apps.

As I previously mentioned, since we are an ARRL affiliated club, we were offered the use of this app. This is one of the perks the club enjoys. I know that most of the members are already ARRL members, but those of you who are not, you should consider joining or renewing your lapsed membership in ARRL.

The April meeting will be:

Bruce Blain, K1BG, will present on “Entry Level Licensing – What’s Worked and What Hasn’t:”

All of us entered the amateur radio hobby in a number of different ways. Whether it was the Class B license of the 30s and 40s, the Novice license of the 50s through the 90s, or the current Technician class license, Bruce looks at the history of entry-level license requirements and conditions, what’s worked and what hasn’t, and what it means for attracting youth to the hobby.

When we get closer to the date, I will publish to all the meeting specifics on how to connect to the ZOOM app and join the meeting.

We used ZOOM to hold a Board of Directors meeting last week, and it went well and was very easy to connect. Basically you can use either the web browser in your computer or your telephone to connect.

I will be emailing this information out to you next week, closer to the actual meeting date.

Jim KG2H

[ED: Jim sent out an email with joining details on 4/9/2020. To prevent ZoomBombing, I’m not including that in this public forum. Check your email, or contact Jim, KG2H.]