Some Field Day thoughts:

If you decide to participate in Field Day from Sesqui then you can either use your own callsign or you can ask Dan for approval to use W4CAE while you are located at Sesgui. If you use W4CAE then the two rules changes will not apply to you because Pete will take care of submitting the Cabrillo to ARRL properly.

If you decide to participate in Field Day from your home or mobile then one of the rule changes WILL apply to you. During Field Day you will be using your own callsign and logging with whatever software logging program you like. After the event is finished you will send in your Cabrillo (or just go online and type in your number of QSO’s to the ARRL web site) to ARRL and IF you want to share your points with the club (its your choice, its your points and they stay your points, you just want to share them) then you MUST follow one simple instruction. On the logging software AND the ARRL web site it will ask you for the club name. The official club name is:

Columbia ARC

That’s what you type in. Anything else and I have no idea who you will share your points with.

We are not encouraging operators to stay home. We are encouraging operators to stay safe, and if staying home is what you feel comfortable with then operate from your home radio room and when the Field Day event is over please consider typing in the club name so we as a club can show good participation with this flagship event.

More info and discussion on the Monday club zoom meeting. Invitations have NOT gone out yet so sit tight, you did not miss it. Sunday night during the club net the invitations will go out via mailchimp. If by Monday morning you didn’t get the invite then go to W4CAE.com and click on CONTACT, fill in the form and we will get you the invite ASAP. If you are not a club member then go to W4CAE.com and click on CONTACT, fill in the form and you will be invited. This is a private zoom meeting so please do not post the meeting ID and password on social media.

Sesquicentennial State Park is the location we have selected for 2020, COVID-19 situation permitting of course.

If interested in joining us then please contact.

Mark Goddard, KN4KRZ, goddard.mw@gmail.com, 803 730 1191 

July 1 2020 start 9am (eastern) — July 7 2020 midnight

There is an LF beacon operating in the Columbia area. It can be received out to about 200 miles via groundwave – much further with skywave. This station is operating as a proof of concept Low Frequency alerting station, as part of a DHS SHARES trial program.   Our Amateur HF community knows that long-range emergency communications  can become unusable when HF skywave propagation is disrupted by a disturbed ionosphere.  But groundwave communications independent of the ionosphere remain available.  Such LF stations can provide essentially omni-directional blanket Alerting and low-bit-rate information coverage, nearly independent of mountains or foliage, etc.

The local station is transmitting on a center frequency of 194 khz. The best way to receive it is to tune your receiver’s USB Mode to 192.500 kHz, and use FLDIG or an equivalent program set at ‘1500 Hz CENTER,’ with a very narrow filter – the signal is only 36 Hz wide, so I use a 50 Hz filter for best reception. 

The signal presently being transmitted is THOR-Micro, available free from fldigi. The signal is sent with a 50 second on, 60 second off duty cycle and runs 24/7.

We are very interested in getting signal reports, and prefer to get them taken near noon, when any skywave component is minimized.  Reports of just the observance of the signal in a waterfall display, even of just an audable signal strong enough for CW (here: on/off as above), or of course, copy of the brief Alert text in the message window of THOR-Micro. 

Send reports to Dan Goldston WD4NG@arrl.net