The month of March is filled with fun and excitement, starting off with the ARRL’s SSB International DX Contest. It’s an excellent opportunity to fill your log with international (DX) stations and put your equipment and skills to the test. Our first club event of the month is the VE session on the 3rd, where I’ll be Elmering the candidates. It’s always a great experience to mentor someone as they explore the amateur radio hobby, and often times I learn about things I hadn’t thought of before.

I’m really looking forward to Hamtrak, a trip to Reno and back by train. I hear the scenery is beautiful, and I’m always down for some relaxed sightseeing. A big thanks goes out to Gerry (WA6E) for organizing and promoting the event!

This month’s club meeting on the 14th features Aaron (K6ABJ) and the SFARC Hamfest crew, who will be showing us all the activities and festivities that will take place during the area’s first hamfest of the year. Local communications team leads will also discuss all the upcoming opportunities to volunteer in community events as on-location radio operators. Whether you’ve volunteered in these events in the past or are interested in exploring ways ham radio can serve your community, consider helping out and making a difference.

Our club-sponsored hamfest will take place on the morning of the 22nd at the Loomis Train Depot, and I’m really excited to meet up with everyone and help set up the venue. The swap meet always attracts hams from all over, and what’s more important that the awesome variety of equipment and parts to peruse are the people you’ll be able to talk to and catch up with.

We finish out the month with our club breakfast on the morning of the 29th, followed by a radio direction finding exercise. I haven’t had the opportunity to participate in the past two months, so I’m planning on getting back in the game this time and dusting off the fox hunting equipment.

There are plenty of excellent talks lined up for the coming months, so stop by and get your fill of interesting and insightful ideas!

It’s hard to believe we’ve already made it a month into the new year! The shortest month brings with it a few events of note, starting off with our club VE session at 7 PM on the 3rd. We’re always looking for volunteers to help with mentorship of test candidates both before and after their exams, so come on by and give a little back to the ham radio community. Our meeting will take place at 7:30 PM on the 14th, and the monthly breakfast at 7:30 AM on the 22nd. Keep an eye out for information on our website about the radio direction finding exercise right after breakfast.

I’m really looking forward to several major activities coming up, especially Hamtrak II. A big thank-you to Gerry (WA6E) for organizing the event once again, and I hope to meet up with you all for a memorable trip.

At last but not least, our annual hamfest in March is always a huge event, and this year’s will be no different. Long before the sun comes up, I’ll be out helping set up and enjoying great chats with hams all around the area (and perhaps beyond).

73, and I hope to see you at our many club activities in the near future!

Jim Zheng
W6JCZ

Welcome to 2025! May the new year bring you good times and lasting memories! Here at SFARC, the new year means more opportunities to engage with the community and demonstrate the many uses of amateur radio.

One of the best ways to do just that is through our monthly VE sessions, the first of which will take place on the 6th. I love meeting up with everyone for the pre-session dinners, and getting together with the candidates to discuss what interests them in ham radio always opens up new perspectives into the hobby. I highly encourage you to help out by Elmering candidates at the VE sessions because everyone has something to share. Help someone out, and perhaps even learn a thing or two yourself.

Our next club meeting will take place on January 10th at 7:30 PM at the Confluence Church Gym in Auburn, California and on Zoom at zoom.w6ek.org. Please welcome Scott (KM6RFB), who put together a comprehensive portable communications backpack inspired by medic bags. We all have plenty of radio gear, and sometimes it can be difficult to pack it all together for field use and transport. Come join us as Scott tells us about the items he used to get everything organized, where you can obtain them, and how easy it can be to tidy up your equipment for that next casual outing or an emergency event that requires rapid response and deployment. After hearing about what he’s done, I’m excited to build something like that myself so I can make better use of what I have and hopefully reduce the time it takes to set things up for outdoor operations.

For the contesters out there, January comes with two major events, the North American QSO Party. The CW contest starts at 10 AM on the 11th, and the SSB contest starts at 10 AM on the 18th. Both run for 12 hours, and the playing field is leveled by limiting the maximum transmitter power to 100 W. If you’ve never participated in a contest before or are interested in making contacts with hams all over the world, give the rules a read and get your station set up. It’s also a great way to learn about and experience for yourself how HF propagation is affected by the time of day as the different bands come alive and go quiet.

We finish up the month with our club breakfast at 7:30 AM on the 25th. This month’s breakfast will be at Mel’s Diner in Auburn, and following the breakfast we’ll go on a fox hunt. After a rainy December breakfast, I’m looking forward to better weather and a well-attended radio direction finding event this time around.