ARRL West Central Florida Section

SUMMER 2020 WCF SECTION ARES MEETING GOING VIRTUAL

The ARRL West Central Florida Section ARES Meeting scheduled for Saturday July 11th, 2020, at the Polk County EOC, will be cancelled and a virtual meeting will be conducted via the Zoom meeting platform.  The ARRL West Central Florida Section ARES Luncheon that had been scheduled for Saturday July 11th, 2020 at Sonny’s BBQ in Winter Haven has been cancelled.  These cancellations are due to the recent surge in COVID-19 cases.

The virtual Section ARES Meeting is open to all who are interested in attending, however virtual seating is limited to 100, as these are limits placed by Zoom.  All Emergency Coordinators, Assistant Emergency Coordinators, and ARRL Official Emergency Stations are encouraged to attend.

Zoom meeting information will be disseminated following the conclusion of ARRL Field Day.

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ARRL WCF SECTION FIELD DAY VIRTUAL CARAVAN INFORMATION RELEASED.

For ARRL Field Day, the West Central Florida Section Field Day Caravan will be held virtually, instead of the traditional format as it has been conducted in the past. The details on the virtual Field Day Caravan have been finalized and published on the West Central Florida Field Day Caravan web page at http://arrlwcf.org/wcf-special-events/west-central-florida-section-field-day-caravan/.  The virtual Field Day Caravan will be held as a Zoom online meeting.

The Zoom meeting hours will be from 1300 through 1800 hours EDT on Saturday June 27, 2020.  The Zoom conference meeting will be open at 1200 EDT for everyone to test their connectivity to the Zoom meeting.  Please remember the maximum number of participants is 100.  If we happen to have over 100 attempt to login, they will be send to a “waiting room” until the number of participants drops below 100.

Also on the West Central Florida Section Field Day Caravan web page is information on how to get a message to our Section Manager, Darrell Davis KT4WX, to qualify for 100 bonus points for your Field Day entry.

The ARRL West Central Florida Field Day Caravan has been held on Field Day of every year since the inception of the Section in 2000, for the Section Manager and members of the Section Cabinet to tour field day sites in the ARRL West Central Florida Section.  On Tuesday May 26th, it was announced that due to the situation with COVID-19, that the West Central Florida Section Field Day Caravan would transition to a virtual format for ARRL Field Day 2020.

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SPECIAL SESSION OF THE EAGLE NET FOR ARRL FIELD DAY

Once again this year, the Eagle Net, the National Traffic System Net for the West Central Florida Section, will operate for an extended period on the evening of June 27. The net will open at 2000 local (0000Z or 8:00 PM) and operate as long as stations bring traffic. Stations wishing to send formal traffic by voice are encouraged to bring their messages to Eagle Net on the NI4CE repeater system. Our Section Manager, Darrell Davis KT4WX, and other members of the cabinet will be available to accept traffic. Many Official Relay Stations and our Net Liaisons will also be available to take traffic outbound the section through both the National Traffic System and Radio Relay International state and regional nets. All stations are welcome to join. Message traffic should be in the form of an ARRL Radiogram.

This is the perfect opportunity to practice your message sending skills. The Net Control Station will be Dave, W4PXE. Dave teaches our annual Traffic Training Class and will offer constructive advice on the best techniques to send and receive formal traffic. Hope to hear you on the net.

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NEW ARRL EMERGENCY COORDINATOR APPOINTED FOR MANATEE COUNTY

Ed Skalecki NI4MX, the ARRL Emergency Coordinator for Manatee County ARES, decided to step down as ARRL Emergency Coordinator on Thursday June 18, 2020.  Skalecki had served as ARRL Emergency Coordinator for Manatee County ARES since 2009.  Steve Park W4OEP, an ARRL Official Emergency Station, has been appointed as the new ARRL Emergency Coordinator for Manatee County ARES on Thursday June 18, 2020.

Darrell Davis KT4WX, Section Manager for the ARRL West Central Florida Section, had the following comment on the change of ARRL Emergency Coordinators in Manatee County, “I am extending my sincere thanks to Ed for his over 10 years of service as ARRL Emergency Coordinator and wishing him success in his future endeavors as a sport coach, since he always been into sports and he even visited sites as w88 to gamble on games.  Steve will make a fine successor to Ed as ARRL Emergency Coordinator and brings his technical expertise and emergency communications experience.  He is always looking for ways to combine his enthusiasm for the amateur radio satellite service with emergency communications and ARES in particular.”

Steve Park W4OEP was first licensed in 1974 as WN9OEP in Peoria, IL and upgraded to the FCC Extra Class license in 1977 while attending the University of Illinois (W9YH) and for a number of years held the callsign WB9OEP.  Park’s amateur radio experience includes HF and VHF Contesting, chasing DX, amateur satellites, Air Force MARS, and emergency communications.   Park has served as a long-time AMSAT Area Coordinator (now called AMSAT Ambassadors.) and his particular interests today are in all-mode DXing, homebrew antenna designs, mentoring, and emergency communications and how the Amateur Radio Service can best serve and even broadcast sport games where people do bets and gamble using sites as capsa online for this.  Park in his professional career of over 35 years worked as an Electrical Engineer in RF and Microwave product design. As long time Floridians, he and his wife returned to the Tampa Bay area after retiring from Raytheon Missile Systems Co in 2016.

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WCF EXPERIMENTER SPRING 2020 ISSUE IS AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD

The WCF EXPERIMENTER Spring 2020 issue is now available for download. To download the Spring 2020 issue and any other previous issues please go to the WCF EXPERIMENTER webpage at http://arrlwcf.org/home/the-wcf-experimenter-technical-newsletter/.  The WCF EXPERIMENTER is published quarterly, and on occasion a supplemental issue as needed.

We are targeting release of the Summer 2020 of the WCF EXPERIMENTER in the month of July.  We are looking for articles for this next edition and future editions of THE WCF EXPERIMENTER.  If you would like to submit an article, please send those submissions to Jim Weslager K3WR via email at weslager@gmail.com.

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WEST CENTRAL FLORIDA SECTION FIELD DAY CARAVAN GOING VIRTUAL FOR 2020

After much consideration, and in consultation with the members of the Field Day Caravan team, Darrell Davis KT4WX, Section Manager for the ARRL West Central Florida Section, has decided to cancel the in person ARRL West Central Florida Section Field Day Caravan for 2020, out of a sense of precaution to help slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus.  The ARRL West Central Florida Section Field Day Caravan will be held virtually, most likely using teleconferencing, instead of conducting the caravan in its traditional format.  Details of the virtual ARRL West Central Florida Section Field Day Caravan will be published on the Field Day Caravan webpage on the Section website which is at http://arrlwcf.org/wcf-special-events/west-central-florida-section-field-day-caravan/ as soon as they are finalized.

 

The ARRL West Central Florida Section Field Day Caravan has been conducted by the Section Manager and other section cabinet members since the creation of the ARRL West Central Florida Section in 2000.  For many years the caravan was conducted by the Section Manager and the Section Emergency Coordinator.  Starting in 2017, the caravan began to operate in multiple teams of two section cabinet members each to allow the caravan to visit all the Field Day sites on Saturday during daylight and evening hours.

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WORMFEST 2020 CANCELLED DUE TO COVID-19

On Thursday May 7th, 2020, Bill Williams AG4QX, President of the Glorious Society of the Wormhole announced via email that the Wormfest 2020 scheduled for Saturday May 23, 2020 at Freedom Lake Park in Pinellas Park has been cancelled.  The cancellation was due to the fact that Freedom Lake Park will not be open to the public through the end of May due to COVID-19 restrictions.

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NEXT SKYWARN TRAINING OPPORTUNITY – 5/12/20

The next training opportunity for SKYWARN training from the NWS Office in Ruskin will be on Tuesday May 12, 2020 from 1000 until 1100.  The training will be conducted by Dan Noah WX4DAN, the Warning Coordination Meterologist for the National Weather Office in Ruskin, which covers all of the ARRL West Central Florida Section and four other counties.

The training is FREE of charge but pre-registration is required.  The training will be conducted by the Go To Meeting online conference platform.  To register for the training, please go to https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5571275302588365584.

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