It’s been another wonderful year for our group. Even though we’ve not had a lot of time to post on our website, the monthly views & visits continue to grow at a very good rate. Our Facebook Group continues to be engaging and we’ve grown to 70 active members. Additionally, more and more people are reaching out to us to find out about amateur radio and how they can become licensed and involved.
We had several POTA (Parks On The Air) and SOTA (Summits On The Air) activations, both as a club and individually. We were the first group ever to activate the Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge and Sargent’s Mesa/Soldier’s Stone in Saguache County. This particular activation gained national attention and was featured on Amateur Radio Newsline & 100 Watts and a Wire. Additional activations this year included Playa Blanca State Wildlife Refuge, Zapata Falls, and Smith Reservoir. We even got on the air for Monte Vista’s first Cinco de Mayo Celebration on May 5th, right on Adams Street in the downtown area.
For various reasons, we shut down our 2-meter repeater earlier this year. Our repeater on 70cm remains quite active with coverage across the San Luis Valley. In November, we were finally able to hook up the 70cm repeater to SkyHub Linked System, increasing our reach by tying into their repeater system. As of this writing it is down temporarily due to a power supply issue, but should be back on the air very soon.
We hosted our second Field Day operation in June at Chapman Park in Monte Vista. It was a wonderful event with many people stopping by from across the San Luis Valley to find out more about our group and amateur radio in general. We even made the front page of the Monte Vista Journal.
Sadly, we suffered a great loss in late August when we were advised that club member Erik Dunn, NA0ED had suddenly passed away. Erik was a wonderful man, a key member of our group and instrumental in pulling together our Field Day, POTA operations and more. Erik is deeply missed by our club.
We had a very nice sendoff for our outgoing President Bob Galey, NO1PB. Bob moved out of the area in late November and before he left, we voted unanimously to make him an honorary lifetime member of our group. Bob was a key part of our starting up in the first place and served as our President for the first two years. We’re indebted to his service and it was an honor to work with him, both in getting this group started as well as growing it to it’s current state.
We continue to offer quarterly testing to obtain or upgrade your license. This year, we helped 7 people obtain their license and 6 upgrade to another level, including one new Extra. We will continue this in 2022, offering testing at our January, April, July and October meetings. If you’re interested in finding about testing or upgrading, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. You can email: SLVHamRadio@Gmail.com for more.
Finally, we held elections at this months meeting for the 2022 Officers & Directors At Large. For this coming year, the officers and directors are:
-President: Adam Lock, WA2JAL
-Vice President: James McCloskey, K9SGT
-Secretary: Michael Benevidez, KF0AXN
-Treasurer: Loren Howard, AB8ZZ
-Trustee: David Newmyer, N0KM
-Contest/Net/QSL Director: Zane Stephenson, KF0BGL
-Training/Testing Director: Timothy Chittum, KE0GVP
-EmComm: Donald McDonald, N0HQD
73’s until next time…
Adam Lock
WA2JAL
President-Elect, SARA