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ISS Contact with Mission Viejo High School
Re-scheduled to Friday, March 9th
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED !
Audio and video of the QSO now
available at:
SOARA Field Day 2006 Pictures
Orange County Fair 2006
Thanks to everyone who helped out !
Field Day 2005 Pictures
Thanks to those who have either sent me pictures or posted them on their own sites. Click on the call sign to view... KG6FCT (new)
"Where's the Fire?" gets it's first real test. (Trabuco and Rose Canyon flooding, Jan 2005)
Dave Seroski has been working on his 'Where's the fire?' project for some months. The goal of the project is to use ham radio combined with the internet to make available information to anyone who needs it during times of emergency. The information can come in from multiple sources. If possible, we'll use first hand reports from ham operators in the area but this can be backed up by other sources including local media, web sites and scanners etc.
The recent storms affected a wide area, caused significant loss of life and destruction of property. While the media do their best to inform the public about what is going on, we have to recognize that they're in the business of making money. The bigger the tragedy, the more dramatic the pictures, the bigger the audience, the more advertising revenue they will receive. The result of this is that they often show re-runs of their most dramatic video while neglecting to provide more detailed information that might help folks in areas with somewhat less damage.
So, for roughly 4 hours, Dave, myself and Tony (AE6QT) provided the CHP officer at the road block with up the the second status of the situation further up the canyon. Radio traffic was handled on the Trabuco 145.240 machine and thanks to Brian NJ6N and Howard, KG6GI for posting updates to the SOARA BBS. Dave reported that several of the canyon residents were closely monitoring the BBS for updates and were extremely grateful for the information that was posted there. He also overheard the SOARA BBS being discussed on one of the 800Mhz systems that he monitors.
Ok, we were basically doing the job of flag-men. However, if we weren't there, the CHP would have closed the canyon until the repairs were complete. The ranchers who went up to feed their horses, the bus full of boys that needed to get to the 'school' and the residents who just wanted to get home, would have had to sit in their vehicles for up to 4 hours until the SBC crew were finished with the repairs.
As for 'Where's the Fire?', even though there was probably just a handful of people that actually benefited from this system this time, we proved that the concept works and that the mechanism now exists for gathering and sharing up to minute information should a disaster occur.
Richard - K6RBS
ARRL 2004 Field Day Results
The results are in and they confirm the fantastic job that was done by everyone last June. The table below shows how we did compared to last year.
GO SOARA ! 2004 SOARA Holiday Party
This years party was held at the Dragon Buffet in Lake Forest. Good food, good friends and good conversation - it doesn't get any better. Lou, KG6FCT's pictures are here. More from Brian, NJ6N, here. JOTA 2004 "I'm sitting in a field being bitten by bugs!" Was the call, as K6RBS made the first contact to a small Island just off the coast of Australia at midnight on the first night of JOTA. (VK9LA on Lord Howe Island, on 40M SSB [working split] - not bad for a G5RV @ 15' and 100 watts! - ed.) Landing first I had staked out the high ground and Richard, arriving 2nd, quickly whipped up a GR5V. As we scampered about in the dark, hanging the thing from trees amongst sleeping boy scouts, I knew it was only minutes before we would be on the air. The next day, at dawn, we awoke to the smell of bacon, sausage and other tasty fare on the grill. Ours, however, consisted of Pop-tarts, but the coffee pot was soon perking as Richard hit the air waves. (We were soon gifted with breakfast burittos, care of cub pack 440, that saved our lives less we would have starved to death). As breakfast was cleared away, we could see the landscape of Camp Pendleton was inhabited by 550 Cub and Boy Scouts. We were at the Rancho Las Flores Scout Reservation for the 47th Jamboree On The Air or JOTA by invatation of Cub Pack 440 and their scout master James Payne KB6WUM. Being a Ham Radio Merit Badge Counsler he had a number of scouts in his pack that had their licenses, KG6WEF Nick (age 9) and KG6WEG Reuben. Also along for the event was N6UUE Sharon. James took full advantage, handing out blue cards for starting the task of getting the Ham Radio Merit Badge. Richard was instrumental in getting that needed first contact for the task for many boys. Later Saturday morning, as if on cue, Richard had to leave and Tony AE6QT showed up to man the station. SOARA's club prez, Ray AE6h, had authorized the use of the club's coveted call sign for the event, K6SOA, and made up signs that said "Scouts On The Air." Big hit with the tykes and adults alike. Seeing Tony swamped by kids, 25 at a time, was kind of funny. But he fared well and the kids thought he was a bigger star than Ronald McDonald. Brian NJ6N had set up a fox for the event and by mid afternoon I had 6 hunts. The kids would start at one end of the camp site with about 3 kids on a team and end up near the fox with about 10 kids per team - all this in the midst of all manner of scouting events: axe throwing, bow and arrow shooting, log cabin building, obstacle course, wood chopping. By 3 PM I saw a lot of very dirty scouts with big smiles on their faces. Yup, now thats scouting! Dinner time showed up and so did Ray AE6H. Tony, Ray and I made our way down to the camp site of cub pack 440 for shiska-bob, hot dogs and salad. Right after we fed there, we were invitied to the next camp site for venison- meat sauce spaghetti (with lots of garlic!) We waddled our way back to the radios and tended new scouting contacts throughout the US. As evening decended, I was catching the NOWA weather station that was saying high winds, thundershowers and hard rain was predicted for the area, but only a 30% chance. Hey, 30% rain on radio gear is 100% failure. We announced our plans to pull up stakes and head out. Our hosts said thanks, but were a little skeptical on the rain part; never the less they prepared camp, just in case those crazy hams were right. Ray led the convoy up the coast to our QTH's. Not 10 minutes on the road he reported rain was striking his windshield. It was the front of the storm that dropped 6.9 inches of rain on my roof at home. As they said in the film, Endless Summer, "You really missed it mate" could be applied here. Plan on this one being an annual trek for us Rich, Tony, Ray? Thanks Cub Pack 440, James, Sharon, Starla, Nick andReuben - Thanks for having us. See ya next year. KG6QCI Tuesday Night 2M Nets Not really a news item - just a cool picture and a reminder. Dave, KG6QCI, runs SOARA's 2M net on 147.645MHZ - (110.9 PL) every Tuesday night at 8:00pm. The picture below shows Dave and his 2 tigers (VU2CATs?) who think his setup us just purrrrrfect.
SOARA Picnic The annual SOARA picnic was held on August 1st, 2004 at Baby Beach, Dana Point. Pictures are available here. Field Day 2004
WOW ! What a great weekend. It's the Monday evening following Field Day, I've just finished putting my home station back together and I'm wondering just how to start putting together my web report on the weekend's activities.
The wire dipoles for 80M, 40M and the G5RV for slow scan were the
last things to go up since they would not be needed until later in the
day. The visitors table had a steady flow of customers for much of the weekend and it was great to see so many new faces as well as some friends that we haven't seen for a while.
The GOTA station was a huge success. It was active for
most of the weekend but final analysis of the score shows that we just
missed the 100 QSOs needed to get the 100 point GOTA bonus.
Included in the GOTA operator list was the Mayor of Mission Viejo, Gail Reavis. Not only was it an honor for us to be visited by such a distinguished guest, it also added 100 more points to our score since her appearance met the criteria of us being visited by an elected official.
Brian hid the cup in a trash can and with some luck, I was able
to find it before anyone else. I then moved it to the play house in
playground below.
Thank you to Lou and Muriel, KA6BJO and KA6BJP who ran the VE testing sessions and congratulations to those of you that passed!
Thanks to Jim, K6VDH for organizing this year's event and special thanks to the folks that provided the great food and cold drinks that kept us all going over the weekend and to everyone else that provided their equipment and time.
73 de Richard, K6RBS p.s. For those of you who are interested in the balloon saga, the details are here.
Repeater Tune-up 4/7/2005 - Thanks to Howard (KG6GI) and Ray (AE6H) the Laguna Beach 2M repeater is now working MUCH better. The machine had been using a single antenna for both transmit and receive. With the new configuration, separate antennas are being used. Initial reports are that the repeater is much more sensitive on receive and a surprise bonus is that, for most folks, the transmit signal is also stronger. Mobiles (including myself) have been able to get into the repeater from over 60 miles out! WPX SSB Contest 3/31/2004 - Myself and several other SOARA members spent last weekend operating the WPX contest from K6NR's station in San Bernardino County. Conditions were good at the start of the contest with 10 being open to the Pacific and South America. 15 stayed open well into Friday evening with good signals from Japan, China, Malaysia, Korea and all points west. As we moved into the late evening, Asiatic Russia was very strong on 20 followed by openings to JA on 20 and 40 as the night progressed. Saturday was good for US contacts on 15 and 10 but the opening to Europe that one might have expected was not there. 15 went out soon after sunset, 20 stayed open a little longer but conditions were well down on Friday. 15 opened up again to JA during the final 2 hours of the contest but overall, conditions were somewhat disappointing. Total QSO count was 1943, 648 prefixes and 2,605,608 points. As of 3/31, this puts us in 6th place out of 11 for claimed scores in the USA Multi/Single class. K6RBS CQP (aka the California QSO Party) 2003 The California QSO Party (CQP) is the premier state QSO party held every year on the first weekend of October. The contest is sponsored by the Northern California Contest Club and details of the contest can be found at www.cqp.org .
We used his club call sign of K6VO in honor of Dana and Brian's father. HF conditions were good for much of the weekend and at times there were deep pile-ups of Europeans, including mobiles, calling us. Even 10 meters was open to Europe. One interesting QSO was with a station in Finland on 15M around midnight his time - most unusual. The station was kept up and running for 29 of the 30 hours of the contest except for 5 minute break to take the picture shown above and another short break to replace some equipment that died. We all took turns to operate SSB and log with Dana taking over when it was time to work CW. Our final claimed score was 636 CW QSOs, 1181 SSB QSOs, 58 Multipliers (All US states and all Canadian provinces) Total Score = 247,660. We also worked 44 DXCC countries ! Thanks to Dana for his hospitality and for allowing us to operate his station. A great time was had by all, especially myself. More pictures can be found at http://nj6n.com/CQP2003/ including several night shots from Steve where we used a flash light to illuminate the tower and 'paint' our call sign on the wall of the house. Richard - K6RBS  A
question from Dave Seroski, KG6QCI.... What is this truck?
"Take a look at the antenna base to my right and the plate to my left."
Ask Dave for details
Here's a clue. SOARAs Wouff Hong SOARA conducted the Initiation Ceremony to the Royal Order of the Wouff Hong at Hamcon 2003 Long Beach,
CA at Midnight, September 6, 2003. 50 hams were inducted into the secret society
that is devoted to fostering courteous and good operating techniques among amateurs, in the spirit of amateur radio.
For the uniniated, who stray from the path of good amateur practices, the Wouff Hong, an instrument of punishment so
terrible that the application can only be left to the imagination, awaits. Field Day 2003 Archives Brian,
NJ6N's SOARA Field Day 2003 pictures
HERE is a pdf copy of the Saddleback Valley News, Mission Viejo edition from July 4th - printed with the permission of the Saddleback Valley News.
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With the preparation and
planning complete, Field Day activities started with our usual get
together at the site on Friday evening. The event was very well
attended and it included the usual ingredients of hot dogs, cold drinks
and tall stories. We put some lines over lamp posts, a couple of spuds
into orbit and we tested the 
The real setup started around 7:00 AM on Saturday. Almost everything
was up and running in time for the start at 11:00 AM.
Like
previous years, we operated in the 3A class. Conditions were reasonable for much of the contest and the surprising
amount of activity on 15M late on Saturday evening kept the GOTA
operators busy. 20 stayed open most of the night but along with 40, it
was not for the faint hearted. As one might expect, both bands were
extremely crowded with 40 have the additional problems of broadcast QRM
and loud static crashes.
I think that everybody who wanted to operate got a chance to do so.
Dana, K6NR, did an incredible job by almost single handedly making as many
points on CW as the rest of us put together did on SSB. 
6M
was also open for much of the weekend with the Heiko and Patty team adding
greatly to our QSO count. VHF/UHF activity seemed to be down on previous
years but his may be due to our limited antenna (we should work on this
for next year).
Around
dinner time on Saturday, someone reminded me that we had discussed doing a
short transmitter hunt. Brian, NJ6N, had already let several people see
his ammo box with a T inside but few people had seen his second T that was
disguised as a plastic soda cup complete with lid and straw antenna. 
By then, several others had joined in the search but the combination of location and drink cup disguise proved to be quite a
problem for them. Some folks spent a long time chasing
reflections around the batting cages while others crawled in and out of the
play house and totally ignored the single object that was sitting inside.
Anyway, I hope everybody had fun looking for the T and that we'll have a
good turn out for the next one on July 11th.
Another
first this year was ATV. Don Hill, KE6BXT set up a very impressive outdoor
TV studio which he kept running for much of the weekend. Don made 9 ATV
QSOs using the Saddleback ATV repeater. The picture quality was
astonishing and his QSOs included live interviews with FD participants at
both ends. If you want more information on ATV go to 
I
did my usual slow scan demo and managed to make our required contact with
Randy, N4RAN in Virginia. 
This
year, Dana Roode, K6NR, invited some SOARA members to work the CQP using his magnificent 
