For the April meeting, Jim WA8MPA will do a technical dive into Common Mode Currents, the skin effect in coax cable, and how to visualize it all with a Nano VNA. Got a kink in your garden hose, and wonder how that works with your cables? What kind and how many ferrite beads cause a given result? They’re not all the same, and with apologies to Yogi Berra, if you don’t know what you have, it’s probably going to do something different! Come to the April meeting and find out how to make sense of all of this, and keep the currents (and garden hoses) flowing the way you want them to.

But wait! There’s MORE!

Swap Meet – Attic giveaway

Our April SFARC General Meeting will have a SPECIAL “Help yourself” opportunity for those attending.  We have a large quantity of items from our recent HamSwap that will be given away FREE!

This includes:
• Test gear
• Tools
• Project Boxes
• Build it yourself kits
• Meters
• RF connectors
• RF adapters
• Crimp-on, Stay/Con connectors

And much more!!!!

Come a little early – we will limit the per person haul to 4 – 5 items

HamFest 2026 Approaches!

The focus of our March meeting will be the upcoming HamFest 2026, to be held March 28th at the Historic Loomis Train Station in Loomis, California.  Event chair Frank KG9M will cover the high level event logistics, and introduce the team of folks leading the various functions that make the event happen.  They will review what’s going on in their area, talk about why their particular area is the most exciting way to participate, and list ways you can contribute.  A brief Q&A will be held after the presentations to answer any questions you may have.

Celebrating it’s 10 year anniversary, the Loomis HamFest is the region’s first of the year, and an event of this magnitude takes the talents and simple participation of many to pull it off.  Check out the link on the website’s Events page to register for where you can help.  https://www.w6ek.org/support?contact=hamfest

Besides the day-of participation in the event, we’re also looking for folks to help off-load the large inventory of donated equipment on Friday at 5pm.  It’s a great way to help, and you get a first look (and a great deal) at the goodies!  Sign up as above.

Greg KO6TH and Jim WA8MPA

For the February 2026 meeting, Jef N5JEF will be talking about a couple of emerging, frontier technologies that will have wide applicability to our future, and a playground, sandbox, or experimental lab for hands-on exploration. These include Spread Spectrum (particularly LoRa) as an effective RF physical layer, and Mesh Network routing, which is an evolving framework for communication that is off-grid, decentralized, resilient, and low-power.

Why are these interesting?

Spread Spectrum modulation makes communication in our increasingly noisy RF environment more reliable, and Mesh Routing extends that communication capability far beyond the direct point-to-point radio horizon. Between the two we can expect longer communication range, with increased reliability.

In his day job, Jef is a senior analyst with the County of Placer Radio Services Group, focused on mission critical public safety and environmental utilities radio systems. The group develops and supports systems including the P25 trunking system for regional law enforcement and public service agencies. Before that, he was a technical and field service manager for over twenty years in scientific instruments for laboratory, industrial, and semiconductor metrology. He is also into emergency management, search and rescue, and personal preparedness, and is, he says, “a total science and technology nerd.”

For January 2026, we will have Scott Read KM6RFB presenting on “Voice Radio Procedures”.  At the core of it, its purpose is to provide a standardized way of passing speech and data traffic as securely as possible consistent with accuracy, speed and the needs of command and control.  But to get the points across, Scott will be enlisting the help of others to demonstrate the stuff that goes right, and wrong, when we communicate.  How many of these malpractices do you recognize?

From Greg KO6TH and Jim WA8MPA, we hope you had a great Holiday season, and best wishes for 2026.  Just remember to spell the year right… 73!