— Club Activity Archive —
At our December 2018 Holiday Dinner Meeting, David W2LNX presented the MARC Service Award to Bob Ekman of the Rockville Science Center for Bob's outstanding support of Amateur Radio at the Rockville Makerspace and Rockville Science Day.
Riley Hollingsworth K4ZDH, Vice Director, ARRL Atlantic Division, is presented with a Lifetime Membership to the Montgomery Amateur Radio Club by Aleks W3JAG, in recognition for Riley's outstanding contributions to Amateur Radio.
The Montgomery Amateur Radio Club and the Rockville Science Center are having free Technician license classes in the Rockville Memorial Library on six Saturday afternoons from March 31, 2018 through May 5, 2018, with a public exam session on Saturday, May 12, 2018.
Terry W3EDS, Chair of the MARC Repeater Committee, presents Brad Spiers the MARC Service Award for his outstanding support through the years to our VHF Relay Site in Reston, Virginia. Brad was instrumental in bringing this relay site on line, allowing us to extend the coverage of our VHF repeater system in the Washington Metro Area.
Tom W3TDH presented one of our new hams, Jamison KC3HKF, with the ARRL First Contact Award at our Oct 5 meeting. Congratulations to Jamison and welcome to Amateur Radio!
Rudolfo Rubio was presented with the MARC Appreciation Award at our September Dinner Meeting in recognition for his generous contribution of heavy equipment hauling transportation vehicles to our MARC Field Day over the past 10 years.
Vic WB2U presents Andrew Beard KC3HPS with the ARRL First Contact Award in recognition of his first two-way communications by Amateur Radio. Aleks W3JAG, President, thanked WB2U for his great work in promoting the First Contact program for new hams within the club. Congratulations to KC3HPS and a grateful "thumbs up" to WB2U!
In appreciation for his effort and forward planning to significantly increase the CW participation in MARC's 2017 Field Day activities, Vic Nardo, WB2U(r) was given a ceremonial CW "token" by Al Rabassa, NW2M(l).

One side of the brass token is the receive tree-structure for Morse Code. The other side is the sending alphabet.

Vic has been instrumental in several grassroots activities to kick-start MARC's CW activities well in advance of FD 2017. Vic is an avid CW enthusiast employing a variety of straight keys and "bugs". He is an active and decorated member of the Straight Key Century Club (SKCC member) having achieved Tribune and Centurion award status.

Thank you Vic for your terrific work in promoting CW to a whole new generation of hams!

Ken K3YEE put together an album of photos he took of MARC's Field Day 2016 held on the grounds of the Damascus Volunteer Fire Department Activity Center.

 
We appreciate you taking time to view this video

Have a look at our latest videos!

 
David W2LNX, presenter

At our December dinner meeting, we presented Dr. Uchechukwu Abanulo KC3ARX with the 2015 MARC Service Award for Outstanding Support of our Education and Training program. Through Dr. Abanulo's superb support and sponsorship, we were able provide an excellent series of Amateur Radio classes at Montgomery College, which resulted in many new hams being licensed within our community. Congratulations to Dr. Abanulo and our sincere gratitude for her valuable contributions to Amateur Radio! It is with great sadness to inform you that Uchechukwu "Uche" Abanulo, KC3ARX (SK), passed away on November 25, 2016 after a brief illness.

Glenn N3COB, presenter

At our November 18 meeting, Glenn N3COB was the first to officially mark our Club's 50th Anniversary celebration by showing terrific old videos of MARC club members and activities from the past 30 years.

Aleks W3JAG, presenter

At our November 10 Meeting, Ron KB3SYA, President of the Damascus Emergency Communications Team, accepted the Montgomery Amateur Radio Club Service Award for Outstanding Support of Amateur Radio Field Day 2015 from MARC President, Aleks W3JAG.

 

Scot K3MSR showed us his Telegraph Decoder Kit. With this SpikenzieLabs kit and a telegraph key, you can train your "fist".

Glenn KC3CNT demo'ed his K42 CW Keyboard at our Club's "Show and Tell" night on September 2.

 
Al KN3U, presenter

Al KN3U updated our club on the Auxiliary Communications Service (ACS) in Montgomery County and also ongoing preparations for the Simulated Emergency Test (SET) to take place in October.

William KC3EMR talked to our Club about the High Altitude Balloon Program at the University of Maryland.

Georgianne KC3DXO demonstrates her flexible Car-to-Field Multi-use Antenna.

Robert K3RRR demonstrating digital operations at MARC Field Day.

View video of Phil KC3CNX demonstrating the amateur radio satellite station at Field Day.

View video of Bob WM1E demonstrating solar panels and special battery used for MARC Field Day 2015.

View video of MARC Field Day 2015 by Aleks W3JAG.

View video of Glenn KC3CNT ingenious design for rafter hooks, which saved us much time and effort at this year's Field Day!

Ken Yee K3YEE has uploaded a collection of photos of MARC Field Day 2015.

Marty Pittinger KB3MXM, an official from ARRL, attended our meeting last week. Among the things he discussed was the importance of supporting H.R. 1301 in the House and S 1685 in the Senate, entitled The Amateur Radio Parity Act of 2015.
This law requires "reasonable accommodation" for Amateur Radio communications with respect to overly restrictive provisions of land use, such as with Homeowners Associations who apply an unnecessarily heavy hand in limiting Amateur Radio communications among its homeowners. Find the texts of the bills and further details here, including draft letters and where to send your letter recommending support of the bills.

Chon K3DHS has published a first briefing slide deck for MARC Field Day 2015.

We had very informative presentations at our April 15 2015 meeting:

An extremely informative overview of the National Traffic System (NTS) was presented by Fred K3CSX at our March 4 meeting.

D-Star overview and update was presented by Bruce WA3SWJ at our January 7 MARC meeting. You can view Bruce's very informative presentation on Youtube. Bruce has also made available the presentation slides.

David N3ADE demonstrated his innovative Patch Panel Prototype to improve cable management for rapid deployment and flexibility at our November 19 club meeting. You can now view David's presentation on Youtube.

Service Award presented to Joel W3RFC

At our December Dinner Meeting we presented Joel Knoblock, W3RFC, owner of The RF Connection, with our 2014 MARC Service Award in recognition of his 35 years of outstanding dedication and support to our local Amateur Radio community.

 

MARC is organizing a General Class license test study group for five successive Saturdays starting on October 4, 2014, 1 PM to 3 PM at Montgomery College, Rockville campus. Anyone interested can find more information about the license classes and exams or by contacting our . The ARRL General Class License Manual will also be available at a discount for those interested.

"Getting the most from your HT" was one of the topics covered at a recent meeting. Ken K3YEE had a terrific presentation showing ingenious ways to get a stronger signal at longer distances by experimenting with different types of cheap and easy to make antennas or antenna accessories. You can view Ken's presentation on Youtube

"Squad Radios from Omaha Beach to Heartbreak Ridge to Ia Drang Valley" was the title of the excellent presentation by Gene AD3F to the Montgomery Amateur Radio Club. Gene has a keen interest in military radios, especially from the World War II, Korean and Vietnam era conflicts. His depth of knowledge, historical anecdotes and humorous asides made for an extremely enjoyable and highly informative evening. If you missed it, there is a video of the presentation

This year MARC partnered with the Damascus Emergency Communications Team of the Damascus Volunteer Fire Department for an exciting and rewarding Field Day 2014! Video of this joint MARC / DECT Field Day can be viewed at http://youtu.be/IDXkXt5_Xiw

Carl WB3HAD and Carlos K8CRS presented an overview of Montgomery County's Community Emergency Response Teams, also known as CERT. There has been a lot of interest recently in CERTs. We even had a visitor drive all the up from Richmond to hear the very informative presentation, which was followed by an equally informative and valuable question and answer session. A copy of the slides from the presentation can be downloaded here.

Dick WN3R presented a very valuable and detailed overview of remote station control. He was a fountain of information, giving examples of types of equipment to consider, antennas, installation and even hints on computer programming. He also shared detailed photos of his own home remote station set up, sprinkled with humorous asides about his various "lessons learned" the hard way. His presentation was enthusiastically received and followed up by numerous questions from the audience.
His slides can be downloaded here.

Auxiliary Communications Service — History, Current Status and Vision for the Future — was the topic of the very timely and interesting presentation. Presenters included Ben K3RYR, Al KN3U, Carl WB3HAD, Tom W3TDH and William W3QX.
The downloadable Power Point presentation is available.

Michael Goldfarb, Acting Planning Manager for the Montgomery County Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security came to our club meeting to talk about the organization and planning for emergency operations in Montgomery County.
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