If you would like to become a member of SELARC, please print out and complete the application/renewal form and return it with your check to: P.O. Box 1324, Hammond LA 70404. Thanks!

Membership renewal fees are due! Please use the application/renewal form! March 31st is the cutoff date for renewals. Club records show the following are unpaid, as of Feb. 21, 2021:

==> ARRL CEO David Minster, NA2AA, to Keynote QSO Today Virtual Ham Expo
ARRL CEO David Minster, NA2AA, will keynote the QSO Today Virtual Ham Expo March 13 - 14 weekend. Minster's talk -- part of an 80+ speaker lineup -- will begin at 2000 UTC (3 PM EST) on March 13. His appearance will highlight ARRL's featured role at the expo, which will also include "Ask The ARRL Lab." ARRL is a QSO Today Virtual Ham Expo Partner...

==> "Whirlwind Boom" Emergency Communications Exercise Set
The amateur radio communications team of Florida Baptist Disaster Relief has created a multi-site radio communications exercise dubbed "Whirlwind Boom," designed to bring together volunteers and local agencies across northern Florida and throughout the southeastern US. The 2-hour drill is set for Friday, March 19. Invitations have gone out to Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES®) groups, county-level emergency managers, state communications experts, and federal SHARES HF Radio Program volunteers, and volunteers taking part in the 2021 Florida Baptist Disaster Relief on-site training the following day. ...

==> Amateur Radio Helping to Fill Earthquake Report "Donut Holes"
An article describing how radio amateurs can help fill the information "donut hole" by providing post-earthquake "Did You Feel It" (DYFI) reports via Winlink HF radio email appeared on February 22 in the American Geophysical Union (AGU) magazine Eos. As the article points out, "Ham radio networks gear up to provide real-time, on-the ground information about earthquake shaking and damage when other communication pathways are knocked out of commission." Authors of the article were David J. Wald of the US Geological Survey (USGS), Vincent Quitoriano, and Oliver Dully, K6OLI.
As the article explains, DYFI uses a questionnaire to gather individuals' experiences and observations, and USGS uses the information to evaluate the shaking intensity at that person's location. DYFI has been in operation since 1999 in the US and 15 years around the world, during which the USGS has gathered more than 5 million individual DYFI intensity reports. ...

==> ARRL Interview Explains Background of Ham Radio in Space Film Short
Josh Tanner, the Australian filmmaker who produced the thriller Decommissioned by Perception Pictures, has explained how he came up with the idea to develop the movie short. In the approximately 6-minute film, SuitSat returns in the future to haunt International Space Station commander "Diaz," played by Joey Vieira, who spots SuitSat, the surplus Russian Orlan spacesuit that Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) turned into an amateur radio satellite several years ago .
An exclusive ARRL video interview premiering on Saturday, February 27, brings together Tanner, who directed the sci-fi horror film about an eerie ham-radio-in-space reencounter, and ARISS-International Chair Frank Bauer, KA3HDO. In the interview, conducted by ARRL volunteer Josh Nass, KI6NAZ, of the popular YouTube channel Ham Radio Crash Course, Tanner described the uniquely creative and technical aspects of the filmmaking involved in Decommissioned and its connection with the real-life SuitSat-1. ...

==> ARES and Red Cross Cooperate to Assist Storm-Affected Residents in Texas
ARRL Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES®) and American Red Cross volunteers joined forces in Texas under the ARRL/Red Cross memorandum of understanding in responding to the situation resulting from unseasonably frigid weather. Kevin McCoy, KF5FUZ, said the Red Cross formally requested an ARES activation in Texas to address the effects of the natural disaster, which included a lack of drinking water, power outages, fuel shortages, and frozen plumbing. Red Cross in Central Texas supported more than 60 warming shelters at the request of governmental agencies.
"We made a special effort to use Winlink email over radio to get reports of infrastructure problems and unmet needs [and to] communicate information about warming centers," McCoy said, adding that Winlink operators provided the most valuable contribution in the disaster response...

==> ARRL Board Considers Plan to Cover New $35 FCC Fee for Some Young Applicants
At its Annual Meeting in January, the ARRL Board of Directors considered a motion to offer a new service that would pay the new but not-yet-implemented $35 FCC application fee for a limited number of new radio amateurs younger than age 18 who, at the time of testing, belonged to an ARRL-affiliated 501(c)(3) charitable organization and passed their tests through an ARRL VEC-sponsored exam session. The proposal called for reducing the VEC fee for these candidates to $5.
The initial proposal came from ARRL Southeastern Division Director Mickey Baker, N4MB. Other Board members offered subsidiary motions. Supporters said the purpose behind the motion was to ameliorate the potential financial hardship the pending FCC application fee posed on certain minors applying for their first license, and to encourage new youth membership. ...

==> South Coast ARES Joins South Coast CERT in California Evacuation Operation
In California, the SC4ARES group, part of the SC4 Amateur Radio Club of La Honda, Loma Mar, Pescadero, San Gregorio, and South Skyline in the ARRL Santa Clara Valley Section (south of San Francisco in northern California), joined with South Coast CERT members in late January. The groups performed a joint exercise to notify residents in the CZU Lightning Complex fire areas of mandatory evacuations in front of a moderate atmospheric river event that had the potential to cause debris flows in those burn-scarred areas. ...

==> British Columbia Radio Amateur Copies Signal from Mars-Orbiting Satellite
As reported on Spaceweather.com, Canadian radio amateur Scott Tilley, VE7TIL, of Roberts Creek, British Columbia, has snagged another signal from deep space. His latest conquest has been to copy the signal from China's Tianwen-1 (pronounced "tee-EN-ven") probe, which went into orbit around Mars on February 10. Tilley told Spaceweather.com that the probe's X-band signal was "loud and audible." ...

==> ARRL to Extend Field Day Rule Waivers from 2020, Add Class D and E Power Limit
The COVID-19 pandemic-modified ARRL Field Day rules from 2020 will continue this June with the addition of a power limit imposed on Class D (Home Stations) and Class E (Home Stations-Emergency Power) participants.
The news from the ARRL Board's Programs and Services Committee comes as many clubs and groups are starting preparations for Field Day in earnest. Field Day 2021 will take place June 26 - 27. ...

==> Orlando HamCation Special Edition Online Event and QSO Party Set for February 13 - 14
The Orlando HamCation Special Edition online event and QSO Party will take place this weekend, February 13 - 14. The online event will include youth, technology, contesting, and vendor webinar tracks via Zoom. ARRL will also present two webinars on Saturday, February 13. ...

==> ARRL to FCC: Additional Volunteer Examiner Coordinators Not Needed
ARRL has told the FCC that no additional Volunteer Examiner Coordinators (VEC) are needed to oversee the administration of amateur radio exams by Volunteer Examiners (VEs). Examination opportunities have continued to be widely available throughout the US -- except for a couple of months during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic -- and adding VECs to the 14 now in place would "have no effect" on the number of available exams, ARRL said. ARRL's comments on February 4 were in response to a January 5 FCC Public Notice in WT Docket 21-2 seeking input on possible expansion of the VEC pool. ...

==> RadFxSat-2/Fox-1E Designated AMSAT-OSCAR 109 as Troubleshooting Continues
Launched on January 17, the RadFxSat-2/Fox-1E CubeSat has been designated as AMSAT-OSCAR 109 (AO-109). The satellite, which carries a telemetry beacon and a linear transponder, along with radiation effects experiments, is a joint mission of AMSAT and the Institute for Space and Defense Electronics at Vanderbilt University. While the telemetry beacon has not yet been heard, the transponder is partially operational at reduced signal strength. ...

==> Article: Ham Radio Forms a Planet-Sized Space Weather Sensor Network
The article "Ham Radio Forms a Planet-Sized Space Weather Sensor Network," which appeared on February 9 in Eos, Earth & Space Science News, sprang from a project by the Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation (HamSCI), founded by Nathaniel Frissell, W2NAF, of the University of Scranton, one of the paper's authors. The other authors are Kristina Collins, KD8OXT, who led the project, and David Kazdan, AD8Y, both of Case Western Reserve University (W8EDU). The article posits that, with their experience dealing with ionosphere-influenced propagation, radio amateurs have an empirical knowledge of space weather and offer a ready-made volunteer science community.
The article covers the methods and research being used to monitor the effects of solar activity on Earth's atmosphere, telecommunications, and electrical utilities -- and the valuable data being crowdsourced from amateur radio signals. ...

==> A "Perfect Coronal Mass Ejection" Could Be a Nightmare
A new study in the research journal Space Weather considers what might happen if a worst-case coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth -- a "perfect solar storm," if you will.

==> Club Gets Double Duty from Minnesota QSO Party 2021 Operation
The Mississippi Valley Amateur Radio Association (MVARA) fielded a team to the parking lot of a local TV station to take part in the Minnesota QSO Party over the February 7 - 8 weekend. Not only did the group get some emergency exercise training but garnered positive publicity for amateur radio from the station's news team. Using special event call sign W0M, 10 radio amateurs -- including one newly minted General-class ham who's still awaiting his call sign -- pitched in. The operation took place in an emergency communications bus, with everything set up like a Field Day operation, although in the Minnesota winter. ...