Education

CAARC sponsored classes to obtain your Amateur Radio License

Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications

 

Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (Click this link to enter)

DESCRIPTION

The Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications is a library of materials and collections related to amateur radio and early communications. The DLARC is funded by a significant grant from Amateur Radio Digital Communications, a private foundation, to create a digital library that documents, preserves, and provides open access to the history of this community.

This free resource combines archived digitized print materials, born-digital content, websites, oral histories, personal collections, and other related records and publications. The goals of the DLARC are both to document the history of amateur radio and to provide freely available educational resources for researchers, students, and the general public.

To contribute content for this project, email kay@archive.org

Ham radio operator jumps in to help woman in Florida during Hurricane Ian

Ham radio operator jumps in to help woman in Florida during Hurricane Ian

Click this link  for the full story.

 

Field Day Pictures 2021

Thanks to everyone who submitted these pictures. Be sure to check all four pages at the bottom of the first page for all the pictures. 

These are the field day results as submitted to ARRL (Thanks VA6SGL ) Great job everyone!

Provinces and states worked.

Provinces and states worked.

VE6QE_FD_Report

 

 

A short video to start your day with a good laugh!

What a great driver these Germans are!!

Advanced Course

RAC Advanced Course for RAC Maple Leaf Operators: Summer 2021

Registration is now underway for the RAC Advanced Course: Summer 2021

https://www.rac.ca/rac-advanced-course-for-maple-leaf-operators-summer-2021/

Note: You need to be a RAC Maple Leaf Operator Member (present or future) to register for this course. See below for information.

In response to the global pandemic, Radio Amateurs of Canada is once again offering an online Advanced Qualification Amateur Radio Course so that individuals can upgrade their qualifications while continuing to practise social/physical distancing.

With your Advanced Certificate, you can run higher power, operate a remotely-controlled station, obtain operating privileges when travelling overseas, set up repeaters, be the trustee for club stations and even become an Accredited Examiner (AE).

Course information:

The course will be 10 sessions in length and each session will be two hours long.

In order to offer maximum flexibility, we will be running two Advanced courses so students will be able to choose one of the following two options:

  • Sunday afternoons from 3 pm to 5 pm EDT (12 pm to 2 pm PDT) starting on Sunday, June 6 and ending on Sunday, August 15

Or

  • Monday evenings from 8:30 pm to 10:30 pm EDT (5:30 to 7:30 PDT) starting on Monday, June 7 and ending on Sunday, August 16

Note: There will be no classes on August 1 or 2 because of the local holidays in some areas.

Course Instruction:

The course instructor is Dave Goodwin, VE9CB. Dave has been an Amateur since 1975, is an active HF Contester and DXer and his DXpedition to Point Amour Lighthouse was featured on the front cover of the November-December 2020 issue of The Canadian Amateur. Dave has also been a long-time volunteer at the national level and has served as the RAC President and as the RAC Director for the Atlantic Region. Since 2015, he has also has been teaching Basic and Advanced certification courses with the Fredericton (NB) Amateur Radio Club.

Course material pertaining to all topics covered in the course syllabus will be provided to all registered students and is available online at:

https://www.rac.ca/rac-advanced-course-for-maple-leaf-operators-summer-2021/

Course Requirements:

The RAC Advanced Qualification Amateur Radio course is being offered at no charge to RAC Maple Leaf Operator Members – both current and future as described below.

Participants in the course will need to meet all of the following requirements:
  1. Participants must already have the Canadian Basic Amateur Radio Qualification and a Canadian call sign.
  2. Participants must already be a RAC Maple Leaf Operator Member or become one by joining RAC at the Maple Leaf Operator level or upgrading to that level.
  3. Participants must have a copy of the Canadian Amateur Radio Advanced Qualification Study Guide provided by Coax Publications. For more information please visit the RAC Study Guides webpage.
  4. Participants must have a computer and Internet connection capable of using the GoToMeeting (GTM) conference platform. You do not need your own account on GTM to take part in this course, but you will have to download an applet from the GTM site to participate.
  5. Participants must have a working email address to receive course materials and links to the sessions.

There is room on the conference server for 200 participants in each session. Auditors are welcome to attend on a space-available basis, provided they are RAC Maple Leaf Operator members. You can sign up by following the instructions on the registration page. 

Other Amateur Radio Courses:

Amateur Radio Basic and Advanced Qualification courses are also now being provided both online and in person by Canadian Amateur Radio Clubs and organizations. Please visit the Amateur Radio Courses webpage for more information at the link provided below.

https://www.rac.ca/amateur-radio-courses/

 

Glenn MacDonell, VE3XRA
RAC President and Chair

Alan Griffin
RAC MarCom Director

www.rac.ca
720 Belfast Road, #217
Ottawa, ON K1G 0Z5
613-244-4367, 1- 877-273-8304
raccomms@gmail.com

Astronaut Owen Garriott, W5LFL, SK

Amateur Radio in Space Pioneer Astronaut Owen Garriott, W5LFL, SK

Owen Garriott W5LFL first ham in space
W5LFL operating 2 meters
Bob King VE6BLD Calling W5LFL on the Spacecraft Columbia on Dec 5, 1983

04/15/2019

Audio received in 1983 from the Columbia Space Shuttle by Bob VE6BLD using a home made turnstile antenna on the roof

The US astronaut who pioneered the use of Amateur Radio to make contacts from space — Owen K. Garriott, W5LFL — died April 15 at his home in Huntsville, Alabama. He was 88. Garriott’s ham radio activity ushered in the formal establishment of Amateur Radio in space, first as SAREX — the Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment, and later as ARISS â€” Amateur Radio on the International Space Station.

“Owen Garriott was a good friend and an incredible astronaut,” fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin tweeted. “I have a great sadness as I learn of his passing today. Godspeed Owen.”

An Oklahoma native, Garriott — an electrical engineer — spent 2 months aboard the Skylab space station in 1973 and 10 days aboard Spacelab-1 during a 1983 Space Shuttle Columbia mission. It was during the latter mission that Garriott thrilled radio amateurs around the world by making the first contacts from space. Thousands of hams listened on 2-meter FM, hoping to hear him or to make a contact. Garriott ended up working stations around the globe, among them such notables as the late King Hussein, JY1, of Jordan, and the late US Senator Barry Goldwater, K7UGA. He also made the first CW contact from space. Garriott called hamming from space “a pleasant pastime.”

“I managed to do it in my off-duty hours, and it was a pleasure to get involved in it and to talk with people who are as interested in space as the 100,000 hams on the ground seemed to be,” he said in an interview published in the February 1984 edition of QST. “So, it was just a pleasant experience, the hamming in particular, all the way around.”

Although Garriott had planned to operate on ham radio during his 10 days in space, no special provisions were made on board the spacecraft in terms of equipment — unlike the situation today on the International Space Station. Garriott simply used a hand-held transceiver with its antenna in the window of Spacelab-1. His first pass was down the US West Coast.

“[A]s I approached the US, I began to hear stations that were trying to reach me,” he told QST. “On my very first CQ, there were plenty of stations responding.” His first contact was with Lance Collister, WA1JXN, in Montana.

ARISS ARRL Representative Rosalie White, K1STO, met Garriott when he attended Hamvention, “both times, sitting next to him at Hamvention dinner banquets,” she recounted. “Once when he was a Special Achievement Award winner, and once with him and [his son] Richard when Richard won the 2009 Special Achievement Award. Owen was unassuming, very smart, kind, and up to date on the latest technology.” Garriott shared a Hamvention Special Achievement Award in 2002 with fellow Amateur Radio astronaut Tony England, W0ORE.

Richard Garriott, W5KWQ, was a private space traveler to the ISS, flown there by the Russian Federal Space Agency, and he also carried ham radio into space.