Presidents Message

Your mailbox has probably been flooded with Congratulations emails on becoming a ham. We hope this one however will help you find a common group of hams to help you get operational and to participate in the organized activities many newcomers donʼt find out about.

First, ICRC is a not for profit Corporation, an organized group of Radio Amateurs who build and operate voice repeaters and Classic packet nodes. Donations to our club are tax deductible. Our club facilities are emergency powered and our Technical committee has designed the stations to operate for many days without commercial power. We operate two very well located vhf FM sites, one repeater is in Bristol on 146.880 MHz PL 77Hz , also co-located is the 442.850 MHz PL 77Hz repeater. The other site is in Burlington, with a ground elevation of 1000 feet. The 147.15 MHz repeater is located there as well as our classic packet node on 145.070 MHz. Over the last two years, through the generosity of the individual club directors money donations, the club purchased, set up and installed, brand new state of the art voice repeaters to replace our vintage Motorola146.880 MHz and Yaesu 442.850 MHz voice repeaters. DEMHS (Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security) Regions 3 and 5 have built into their emergency plans the use of our repeaters. Our Annual dues of $50 pays for the power, our site lease and we have to squeeze our stations repair costs from that as well. Our dues a set annually at our February meeting by dividing the previous years operating expense by the number of dues paying members during the previous year.

The ICRC is much more than a technical club though. We participate as a club in the annual ARRL field day, we do at least one a year Public Service event (the Winding Trails Fat Tire Classic, a Regional off the road bicycle Race) and members help several other clubs in providing Public Safety Communications for many foot races and bicycle races. In addition, we have members who participate in almost every nook and cranny of amateur radio. We have members who are very active Navy Mars members. We have access to folks who build radio controlled model planes and boats as well as folks with experience using ham Radio satellites. Many of our members also participate in ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service.). Others in our membership only have time to be active on the way to and from work. If youʼre interested in or become interested in leadership roles, our club has as members several ARRL CT Section leaders as well. All our club members will be happy to help mentor you.

To help trim postage costs and make dues money stretch further, our club was one of the first to use e-mail to deliver our club newsletter “Time Out”.

In Jan. 2009 the club Directors decided to offer one-year FREE membership to newly licensed operators who apply, beginning when the FCC granted your license. The clubs directors want to help insure new hams have a mentor to get the help they might need to get on the air and be active. To help get to know you, the Directors hope you will bring this membership application on this letter to our meeting. Our meetings are held on the third Friday each month at the American Red Cross, 209 FARMINGTON AVE, FARMINGTON, CT. Our Meetings start at 7:30 PM.

Do you get e-mail? Send me your email address, I will send you a copy of our newsletter. This is to keep you up to date while your membership application is being processed. E-mail your address to k1hej@yahoo.com. and I will see you get added to our mailing list.

Larry Buck, K1HEJ, ICRC President

Last Updated Friday, March 06 2009 @ 09:00 AM EST|1,273 Hits