11/25/2024
St. Petersburg Amateur Radio Club
This serving of Lagniappe features some poetry of Olde.
Silent Key
By Howard O. McCall
From The Sparks Journal, Vol. 3 #2
A shaft of sunlight,
Pierces the gloom,
Of the shadowy quiet,
In the radio room,
The equipment sits idle,
Because, you see,
The one who used them,
Joined SILENT KEY.
The once shiny microphone,
Now dusty and dull,
A coaxial switch,
Angles off from the wall,
The chrome plated bug,
A beauty to see,
The one who made use of these,
Joined SILENT KEY.
Gone … Click for more
Home Brew Night was a big hit with the near 50 SPARC members who turned out. An informative evening with 7 presenters and 8 projects shown/explained to those present.
See the video clip of the presentations at:
One of the first Field Days I ever attended (back in 1982) was at the Fairgrounds in Largo (home of the Renaissance festivals). At that event, the Clearwater Amateur Radio Society (CARS), the Metro Repeater Association (Metro) and the St. Petersburg Amateur Radio Club (SPARC) came together in the spirit of inter-club cooperation to put on a huge ARRL Field Day effort. This was complete with a great location, good equipment, operators to man the stations, great food and loads of fun.
Another interesting email arrived at SPARC this week. A lady had “received” a message in Morse code she couldn’t decode. Strange you ask? True. She asked us for help in decoding the message. Forwarding the request to a few SPARK members, Ed NZ1Q, stepped up to the challenge.
Ed was given a phone number that connected him to the recorded CW message. Thirty seconds later, the message was decoded. It turns out that sender of the email was involved in a “learning challenge that involves solving [a series of] … Click for more
Every night on the net members and non-SPARC members check-in to just chat about their day after handling any NTS traffic. We also have a multiple choice question each night from the license pool. On your check-in you can give your best answer or just take a guess. We do it just for fun and to help those that are thinking of taking an exam.
We just completed the General class questions and are now starting the Extra Class questions. Even if you are studying for the General Class, many … Click for more
As president, I get a lot of emails from folks who search on Google for the terms “ham radio” and “St. Petersburg.” Recently I received an email from a boat owner who lives in Seminole. He was having VHF radio issues on his sailboat, and was not sure what or where the problem was. Sailors, like hams are resourceful folks, resulting in the email to me. I forwarded the email request for help to the SPARC membership via the SPARC email reflector.
Within hours SPARC member Jack, W4GRJ, was making … Click for more