PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE for February 2021

Good day fellow amateurs: just sitting here working some cw dx with lots of activity on 20m – the contest is the European dx contest and this is just one of many events you can get into. The bands have been fairly active this past couple of weeks and I have a number of contacts on 17m that are throughout Europe.
A good event calendar is wa7bmn and a good spotting program is DX WATCH.COM or DX SUMMIT.COM
We now have a swap shop on our web page: just click swap shop and it takes you immediately to HAMSHACK where you can post items you want or to sell and see items across the country as well as local. Menu driven and very easy to use.
I just checked my email to see many of you going through the membership renewal process, this is good to see and I hope many more of you will get yours in soon. Many of us, including me, are so happy to have amateur radio as a hobby as it allows us to be inside so much of the time with Covid 19 and still get out to the world via radio. I have renewed so many relationships with amateurs all over the world and even made new friends. There are ways to get your DXCC or IOTA (ISLAND ON THE AIR) OR WORKED ALL STATES OR WPX awards and so on. Now there are so many different modes like ssb: cw: slow scan: fm: digital like ft4/ ft8 – jt65 and so on. There has been 6 meter openings as well to the United States.
I was into the club on Friday and there was no mail. While there I hung a 2021 wall calendar and filled in some of the possible events. The CTV news announced the Transport Canada ruling that NO cruise ships would visit the port of Halifax and that a new announcement would come in February of 2022. That means any involvement at The Museum of the Atlantic will not happen again for this year. As I mentioned earlier that the Xenon international event has been cancelled are so many others around the world including our events locally.
Well there is not much else happening at the club, we keep planning to get more work done at Cowie Hill and station 50 and Bill and Jason are doing a lot of work in the repeater network. We are going to submit a grant proposal to HRM for computers and test equipment. Again, with Covid and its toll on budgets, we may get some help or nothing as there are other priorities within the city.
Everyone be safe, do the right things to stay safe and I look forward to seeing you on the virtual meeting on the Wednesday 17th of February for our General meeting at 7pm. Have fun on the radio too – it’s important for our mental health as well.
73 – Respectfully, Brian Allen- VA1CC, President of the HARC