South Orange Amateur Radio Association


	HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM K6SOA !

The South Orange Amateur Radio Association (SOARA) is an ARRL Special Service Club serving ham radio in South Orange County, California since 1974. SOARA is one of the fastest growing clubs in California due to its many activities including Field Day, repeaters, DStar, monthly meetings, ham radio classes, FCC testing, weekly nets, monthly transmitter hunts, Saturday workshops, emergency preparedness, community event support, HF DX, Amateur TV and much much more.

If you are new to the hobby or an old timer... SOARA will have something for you.

2012 Meeting Dates

A list of this years meeting dates and events.

Badges

Badges will be available at no charge at the first meeting following application.

Those who need a replacement send a note to membership@SOARA.org.

VE FCC Exams!

Next sessions:

January 23rd

before the meeting.

Contact nm6x@soara.org

for info.

Walk-ins ok.

Extra || General || Technician
CW Exam, too! Contact Mike Slygh NM6X for more info.

VEC Question Pools are available from the ARRL at:

http://www.arrl.org/arrlvec/pools.html

Already taken your exam and waiting for your license?

Check your status with the FCC here.

APRS lookup - find out were folks with APRS are currently located:

SKYWARN

www.ocskywarn.org

OC SKYWARN NETS

1900 Sundays

145.400

Emergency Information

(Where's the fire?)

The Emergency Information area on our message board is an information clearing house to help you, your family, friends and the community in an emergency.

If you have info about an event, post it there. If you don't have internet access, use your radio to call someone who does. If you need info, look for it there. Use the repeaters to exchange information about local events, use 7.250 to exchange information about wide area events.

Don't forget Gordon West's daily ARES net at 8:30 on 7.250. Our SOARA net control is Lou, KG6FCT. More info here.

soara_news.gif (5019 bytes)

A pdf version of the January 2012 Propagator is here.

If you did not receive your copy by email, please let k6rbs@soara.org know.

The latest installment of Hal's Ham Radio 101 series - "HF Part 2" can be found here.

(Prior articles can be found here).

CW Practice Nets

Even though CW (Morse Code) is no longer a requirement to get a ham license, it seems that it is more popular than ever. Operators with limited antennas and low powered transmitters find that they can easily communicate using CW due to its excellent signal to noise ratio compared to wider modes like voice. In many cases, the only way to work those rare DX stations is with CW.

So, due to the increase in interest in CW, especially within SOARA, we have decided to try running some slow CW practice sessions of our own.

One will be held each Tuesday evening starting at 7pm on the Trabuco (145.240 Mhz) repeater. Sean, AJ6B will host the net and send sample QSOs using FM MCW. Speeds will start around 5 WPM and increase to around 15 WPM depending on who is checked in. Characters will be at 15 WPM (i.e., we will use the Farnsworth method of sending).

Please don't be shy - let him know if you are listening. It doesn't matter if you are unable to copy much at first - that's why we practice.

In addition, we will hold a net on Thursdays, starting at 8PM on 10M - 28.305 USB.

The band will probably be closed to DX by then so we should find the frequency clear. The net will be a combination of voice and CW. If your radio has an AUTO CW feature, please use it. If not, the CW frequency will be 28.3057 (700 Hz offset).

We will also monitor the Trabuco repeater during the net.

We will start with the following letter groups:

Group 1: ETANIM

Group 2: DSOURC

Group 3: KPBGWL

Group 4: QHFY

Group 5: ZVXJ

Group 6: 1234567890

Group 7: Punctuation

SOARA is now on Facebook !

Just search Facebook for "South Orange Amateur Radio Association"

Our next meeting is on:

January 23rd 2012 at 7:00pm

Meeting Location

Norman P. Murray Community and Senior Center
24932 Veterans Way
Mission Viejo, CA 92692
Google Map

Topic: Ham Radio Jeopardy

Past Meeting Topics?... Click Here

Future Meetings

TBA

FIELD DAY PIX ARE HERE

(If you have more, please email to k6rbs@soara.org)

Letter from the Mayor of Mission Viejo

SOARA can receive membership dues and donations from your credit card. If you're not familiar with PayPal, SOARA finds it very convenient: as it allows you to send money to anyone with an email address WITHOUT having to reveal your credit card info. It's big success came from the popularity of online auctions... but it lis a great way to transfer cash for any purpose, and its FREE! Just click here or the logo! Remember to enter your callsign in the comments field so we'll know it's you. (If you are already a PayPal member, just email your payments to payment@soara.org.) 73

CONTACT: P.O. Box 2545, Mission Viejo, Ca. 92690, E-Mail: soara@soara.org

Club nets:

2M 147.645 MHZ, Tuesdays @ 8:00pm - AR Newsline etc (4 linked repeaters).

2M 146.115 MHZ, Wednesdays @ 8:00pm - Weekly DSTAR net on PORT C.

40M 7.200 +/- MHZ , on Sundays at 8:00am (new freq)

40M 7.250 +/- MHZ , on Week days at 8:30am - Gordo Net

Our 10 repeaters provide ham radio operators with excellent VHF and UHF coverage in Southern Orange County including the cities of Mission Viejo, Dana Point, San Clemente, Laguna Niguel, Laguna Beach, Laguna Woods, Aliso Viejo, Lake Forest, Irvine, RSM and Trabuco Canyon. Our high level repeater covers most of Orange, Los Angeles and Riverside counties.

If you have articles, things for sale or trade, or items of interest for others in the club.. Please send our Newsletter Editor an email. Click here to send Mike a note.

Explanation of wireless communication . . ."You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat." -- Albert Einstein

Copyright 1999 - 2012, South Orange Amateur Radio Association
Webmaster E-mail: webmaster@soara.org
Last Revised: Thursday, January 19, 2012