SARC

By Kirk K9MSG

Our little Parks-on-the-Air event today (Friday) was great fun (photos attached). Howard (KD9WSV), Kirk (K9MSG), and Paul (KD9FMN), AKA the “Three Wise Men,” made ~70 shared (pass-the-mic) contacts at William G. Stratton State Park in Morris where we all spoke to each contact. That resulted in over 200 combined QSOs over 3 hours on 20m during a day in which the band was not giving up QSOs easily!

In the end, the QSOs included Sweden, Spain, the Azores in the North Atlantic, Argentina, Canada (5) and contacts from coast-to-coast in 21 states including California, New York, Maine and Florida. Texas kept us the busiest (9) with surprisingly strong showings from Idaho (3) and Oklahoma (3). We even had my 3rd QSO with Bill (AL7KC) in North Pole Alaska along with his neighbor, Paul (NL7V).

I hope to offer this SARC event again in Aug or Sept and will look for input from the club on which local park we should target (perhaps this one in Morris or Silver Springs in Yorkville or James Pate in Wayne). [See the discussion on SARC-All – Ed.]

SARC once again put on a successful field day. We welcomed a total of 77 members and guests to our site on Plum Grove road. The club operated in class 2A with 2 transmitters and all emergency power.

The club tallied a total of 4,916 points made up of various bonus points for specific tasks and procedures as well as the following QSOs:

• SSB 328
• CW 653
• Digital 62

The photos below document just some of the preparation and activities that took place this year.