Nashua Area Radio Society activities. Included is Field Day, our Annual Picnic, Tech Nights, On The Air Activations and much more.
Hi all, I have great news I’d like to share. The club breakfasts are ready to resume. We will be meeting at Joey’s Diner in Amherst on Saturday, July 10th at 8:30 am. I hope to see you there!
Jim Lajoie K1BRM
2020 was a year that most people would like to forget. However we had a great year at the Nashua Area Radio Society, as we continued to have great meetings and activities online despite the pandemic. Here is our 2020 Year in Review.
Winter Field Day 2020 was held the last weekend in January. We improved our score by over 100% and came in 2nd in the Outdoor Category. See this article for more on our operation and this article for the results. This was the last major event that we were able to spend together.
When the Coronavirus Pandemic hit, we could no longer meet together. We moved our meetings online and continue to hold our monthly membership meetings and tech nights over Zoom web conferencing. Although we miss getting together in person, this allowed us to include our internet members in our meetings. In addition, geography was no longer a barrier so we brought in some great speakers for our monthly meetings including Bob Heil from Ham Nation, Tim Duffy, K3LR from DX Engineering, Ray Novak from Icom, Fred Lloyd from QRZ, Doug Grant, K1DG, world class contester, and more!
The Nashua Area Radio Society decided to not hold a large group operating event for Field Day 2020 due to the pandemic and the need to social distance. The ARRL modified the rules to allow Category D (Home w/non-emergency power) stations to contact each other and to allow operators to designate a club with their entries.
We held a social distanced field day but still maintained a few of the annual field day activities. Sterling, AK1K took the lead in teaching us all how to send and receive messages for the messaging bonus, and led a messaging net during Field Day. We also held a Zoom meeting and invited an elected official and several club members who are in public agencies so that the members attending could claim those bonuses. Club members who were operating published articles with their plans on the website. You can visit this link to see the Field Day stories.
Our total club score was 14,952, and put us in the top 3% of all clubs.
This year we partnered with KC1XX to operate as K2K in the 13 Colonies Special Event, held the week of July 4th. Matt, KC1XX and his world class contesting team operated for Matt’s station in Mason, NH. Club members operated from their stations and some operated remotely from AB1OC/AB1QB. We ended up making 22,696 contacts during the event. This was an all time record for a state in the event! We easily won the Top State Operators Award and every one who operated received a plaque!
In addition to taking our membership meetings online, we also took our Tech Nights online each month. This allowed our members as well as internet subscribers to have access to the live training sessions. We had some great speakers including Spencer Webb, W2SW, Jamey Finchum, AC1DC, Fred Kemmerer, AB1OC and learned all about EME, Antennas, Contesting, Portable Operating, PCB Design with Eagle and more! Members and Internet Subscribers can find video recordings of our tech nights on our website.
We also took our license classes online this fall. We are now offering an online exam session after the class to all students in the class. Gordon West dropped in to offer some words of encouragement to our Technician class! Our Spring 2021 Classes are on the calendar and registration is open.
This year we took our Ham Bootcamp program online. We held an all day Ham Bootcamp on Saturday November 7th, where we taught new and inactive hams the skills they need to get on the air. The session was very successful – we had over 200 people attend! The ARRL published an article about our Ham Bootcamp in the October Issue of QST, which helped Hams all over the country and in Canada find out about it. Our next Ham Bootcamp is scheduled for April 24th, 2021. See this article for more information and links to register for Bootcamp.
Thanks to our Ham Bootcamp instructors, Abby, AB1BY, Jamey, AC1DC, Aron, W1AKI, Burns, WB1FJ, Fred, AB1OC and Anita, AB1QB.
2020 was a great year for membership! We celebrated over 300 members at our December Meeting – an increase of over 100 members since 2019! We now have over 240 regular members and over 80 internet subscribers!
We held a Student Teacher Contesting competition this year to encourage young people to get on the air and develop their operating skills. The winner was Keith Sangillo, KC1IMK, who won an IC-7300. Abby Finchum, AB1BY was a close 2nd and will win a DX Engineering Hex Beam Antenna.
NARS in the Media – 2020 Year In Review
The Nashua Area Radio Society got quite a bit of media exposure this year. We published 2 articles in QST, were on Ham Nation twice, and were mentioned in a youth contesting article in the National Contest Journal.
Our activities chairperson Jim, K1BRM was interviewed by Val, NV9L on Ham Nation to publicize the NARS QSO party, which we held in the fall. We also publicized Ham Bootcamp on that episode.
Here are links to the NARS mentions in the media:
Note that ARRL Membership is Required to access QST and NCJ online
We ended the year with a memorable December Meeting, where we held Elections, heard from our NH Section Manager, John Gotthardt, K1UAF. We even had a visit from Santa where we could tell him Ham toys we want for the holidays! I hope everyone got what you wanted!
As we close 2020, we are hoping for a better 2021, and that we can finally get together in person with our fellow club members. We wish all of you a Happy and Healthy New Year!
73,
The Nashua Area Radio Society is sponsoring the NARS QSO party on September 26th. This QSO party is born from the frustration of not being able to have large groups of our members meet for the SOTA, POTA, and IOTA events that we had scheduled before the Pandemic.
There have been some important rules changes that you need to know about. We have adjusted the final exchange and scoring to make it easy for you to use the existing North American QSO Party set up in a contest logger such as N1MM+ to participate and score your operation in the NARS QSO Party.
The exchange and multipliers for this contact are patterned after the North American QSO Party. Here’s a summary of what has changed:
I want to quickly go over how to set up N1MM+ to log contacts and score your entry correctly. N1MM+ is a free logging software that will allow you to log contacts, score the contest for you and also provide you with a log in Cabrillo format as well.
When you are finished downloading open the software.
This explanation probably sounds kind of clunky but once you open the software it will make a lot more sense. I think you should have N1MM+ configured correctly if you follow the steps above. I have pictures that I took. Email [email protected] if you want a copy of the setup pics.
There will be two operating categories for the NARS QSO Party: HF and VHF and up. A summary of the rules is below.
You should submit your final log as an Electronic Entry only and your submission should include a complete Cabrillo format log and your claimed score. Logs should include date and time in UTC, Frequency, Mode, Call Signs, and the Exchange for each of your contacts. Logs are due 7 days after the contest is finished.
Certificates will be awarded to the top 3 stations in each category.
Fred, AB1OC, and I will be on Ham Nation this Wednesday, September 23rd, starting at 9 PM Eastern Time, to publicize this so we should see plenty of activity on the air.
I hope to get you in my log!
73
Jim Lajoie, K1BRM
