The February meeting of the Lakeland Amateur Radio Club was on Monday, February 8th at Parkview Baptist Church. Dan Gagnon, WZ1P did a fabulous presentation on his portable H.F. station.

For the February meeting and until further notice we’ll be back to meeting at the Parkview Baptist Church, 509 Parkview Place, Lakeland FL 33805 (on the west side of Lakeland Regional Hospital). Meetings are the second Monday of each month at 7 p.m. with testing at 5:30 p.m.

Orlando HamCation has announced it will sponsor the HamCation QSO Party over the February 13 – 14 weekend (UTC), “to create a fun way for amateurs to celebrate the Orlando HamCation experience over the air.” The HamCation QSO Party will be a 12-hour event on HamCation weekend. HamCation 2021 was to host the ARRL National Convention, which now will take place in 2022.

“The QSO party will replicate the camaraderie and social experience of attending HamCation and provide a way to have fun on the radio, since HamCation 2021 will not be held due to COVID-19,” the HamCation QSO Party Committee said. The HamCation QSO Party will run from 1500 UTC on February 13 until 0300 UTC on February 14. It will be a CW and SSB operating event on 80, 40, 20, 15, and 10 meters. Any station may work any other station.

Categories will be High Power (more than 100 W output), Low Power (100 W output or less, but greater than 5 W), and QRP (5 W output or less). All participants will be single operators; there is no multioperator category. The exchange will be your name and state/province/country, and the outside temperature at your location. “We are including temperature at your QTH as a way of highlighting Orlando’s mild February weather,” the committee said.

Nine HamCation special event stations with 1 × 1 call signs will be on the air with combined suffixes spelling out HamCation (e.g., K4H, W4A, K4M, etc). Each contact will count as one point, and stations may be worked once on each band and mode. Entrants will report their scores on www.3830Scores.com; no logs are required. Final results will be based on the information submitted to the website.

Station guest operators must use their own call signs and submit their scores individually. Plaques and certificates will be awarded. 

Virtual HamCation Set

The Orlando HamCation Special Edition online event over the February 13 – 14 weekend will take the place of what would have been the HamCation 2021 in-person show.

The online event will include youth, technology, contesting, and vendor webinar tracks. ARRL will also present two webinars on Saturday, February 13.

• ARRL Member Forum at 1 PM EST, moderated by ARRL Southeastern Division Director Mickey Baker, N4MB.
• Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES®) presentation at 3 PM EST, moderated by ARRL Director of Emergency Management Paul Gilbert, KE5ZW. The ARES presentation will include panelists from ARRL Section Emergency Coordinators in Florida.

Live, online prize drawings also are scheduled during the HamCation Special Edition online event. 

http://www.arrl.org/news/hamcation-qso-party-set

Dayton Hamvention® will not take place for the second year.

“Unfortunately, several setbacks in the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic make necessary the difficult decision to cancel Hamvention 2021,” a January 11 announcement from the Hamvention Executive Committee said.  Sponsored by the Dayton Amateur Radio Association (DARA), Hamvention was set to take place May 21 – 23 in Xenia, Ohio.

“Hundreds of volunteers have been working to do everything necessary to bring this Hamvention to the many amateur radio enthusiasts and vendors who support the Dayton Hamvention. Vaccine distribution both in the United States and around the world is lagging behind what was planned. In addition, the emergence of a more communicable form of the COVID-19 virus increases the potential for further public health problems in the next few months. We make this difficult decision for the safety of our guests and vendors. Those who had their tickets deferred last year will be deferred again.”

The committee said the show would return in 2022 and hinted at a QSO party for Hamvention weekend. In November, Hamvention had announced that “The Gathering” would be the theme for the 2021 show.

Hamvention is the largest annual amateur radio gathering in the US and was host of the ARRL National Convention in 2019. The ARRL Hamfest and Convention Calendar includes a searchable database that includes other canceled in-person events.

In a Report and Order (R&O), released on December 29, the FCC scaled back to $35 the fee for a new license application, a special temporary authority (STA) request, a rule waiver request, a license renewal application, and a vanity call sign application. All fees are per application. There will be no fee for administrative updates, such as a change of mailing or email address. The FCC has agreed with ARRL and other commenters that its proposed $50 fee for certain amateur radio applications was “too high to account for the minimal staff involvement in these applications.”

The effective date of the fee schedule has not been established, but it will be announced at least 30 days in advance.

http://www.arrl.org/news/fcc-reduces-proposed-amateur-radio-application-fee-to-35