News from the Sterling Park Amateur Radio Club (SPARC)

SPARC’s monthly meeting was held November 2nd at the Eastern Loudoun Station of the Sheriff’s Office. There were 20 members present.

Following member introductions, we had an excellent presentation by Paul Savidge, N4PSS, on the mission and operations of SKYWARN. The objective of SKYWARN is to improve weather safety by providing timely and accurate weather observations of on-the-ground events. SKYWARN is associated with the National Weather Service and consists of a vast network of volunteer weather spotters. Paul told us that they are looking for additional volunteers to work in the area as net control and desk operators. Many of the spotters are hams and reporting is often done via local amateur radio nets (including 147.300 in our area). Some basic training is required for volunteer spotters and this includes identifying specific storm conditions and how to report information. We'll explore arranging this training for interested SPARC members. Thanks to Paul, K4PDF, for coordinating this excellent presentation.

We continued discussions on rules and possible revisions for the 2012 Virginia QSO Party. Red, N3TG, proposed that we penalize mobile operators that do not identify themselves as mobile. This affects individual scoring as mobile contacts have a higher point value. We'll continue discussions on this topic at the next meeting. Based on the low amount of overnight activity in the contest, we also agreed to change the operating time of the contest from 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM on Saturday and 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM on Sunday (Virginia local time).

We'll operate an amateur station from the W&OD caboose on Saturday, Dec 10th, in conjunction with the Herndon Holiday Model Train Show. SPARC will man the caboose and demonstrate amateur radio to the many visitors. Henry, K2BFY, and Bill, WF1L, are organizing this year's event. Details will be discussed at the December meeting.

QSL Bureau report: Dick, W2YE, reported that the bureau is operating fine and that nine SPARC members are serving as letter managers. See Dick if you'd like to volunteer.

The next meeting will be on December 7th at 7:00 PM, in the Eastern Loudoun Sheriff’s Station (46620 East Frederick Drive, in Sterling).

73,
--MARK KI4OBT