News from the Sterling Park Amateur Radio Club (SPARC)

We had our monthly meeting on May 4th at the Claude Moore Community Center. We had 16 members and two guests at the meeting.

We had a brief business meeting to discuss plans for the club's participation in Herndon Fest and Field Day. Herndon Fest is coming up on 4 and 5 Jun. We will operate an information booth and amateur station on the 4th and provide radio support to the festival's 5k/10k races on Sunday. Work assignments and duties were finalized. Gordon, NQ4K, distributed copies of the initial plan. They'll be reviewed one final time at the June club meeting.

Plans for Field Day (25 & 26 Jun) were also revised. We will operate a Class 3A station along with extra VHF/UHF and GOTA transceivers. Antenna set-up will take place Friday evening (Jun 24th) and radio operations will begin Saturday afternoon at 2:00 PM (local).

After the brief business meeting, Jim, KF4PQL, and Kevin, W4KLS, led a workshop on the construction of a 2-meter J-pole antenna. Following design articles which are available from a number of sources, we built at least four working antennas. Once built, they were tested on the SPARC antenna range (an MFJ analyzer). We had a lot of fun making a simple and practical antenna.

The next meeting will be Wednesday, June 1st, 7:00 PM, at the Claude Moore Community Center. See you then.

73,
--MARK KI4OBT