Welcome to the Frederick Amateur Radio Club!

The Morgan County Emergency Communications Network is sponsoring AUXCOMM training on April 22-23, 2023, at the Blue Ridge Community Center, Berkeley Springs, WV. This is an advanced EmComm class that emphasizes operations in the Incident Command System (ICS). While the course is being taught in West Virginia, the class is open to all radio amateurs interested in learning more about the ICS protocols and agency interoperability, and there is no charge to attend.

The course prerequisites require all attendees to have taken IS-100, IS-200, IS-700, and IS-800 to participate. These prerequisites will familiarize you with the basics of the ICS system and are available free of charge online through www.fema.dhs.gov.

Space is limited and the deadline to register is April 8, 2023. To register, please contact Trenton Michael, KE8HMY, at ke8hmy@mcecn.org

On Saturday February 25th we will be joining the American Red Cross in a Winlink communications exercise.  The goal is to set up a temporary field station in Gaithersburg and send/receive Winlink exercise messages via stations both near and far.  We expect to meet at 7405 Lindbergh Drive in Gaithersburg around 9:30, get set up, and be on the air by 10:30.  You can participate in one of two ways:

1.  Join us in Gaithersburg for the exercise.
2. Act as a “far end” Winlink station, and reply to our drill messages.

If you are a regular FARC Winlink participant, you likely received a message from me last night via Winlink.  If you did NOT receive a message from me, please send me a message via Winlink – address to K3MMM and copy to Sandy KB3EOF.  We expect to have an HF radio deployed to receive incoming peer to peer messages – frequency and call sign will be sent via Winlink during the exercise.

We also plan to deploy an AREDN (amateur radio emergency data network) node as a part of this exercise.

Please contact me with questions.
73!
Mike K3MMM

Come one, come all to the February 2023 club meeting on Monday February 20th at 7pm.  Members of the community, particularly those with an interest in amateur radio, are always welcome.  We meet in Independent Hose Company social hall, located in the rear of the fire company.  Address is 310 Baughmans Lane Frederick.  We’ll have a presentation by Steve W3ATN regarding satellite communications with ham radio.  Please join us either in person (preferred) or via zoom here: Note regarding zoom: Your zoom-installed application MAY indicate you need version 5.10.3 or newer and only allow exit… The only way I was able to get it going was to uninstall my previous zoom version using the Windows control panel and then re-install the newer zoom version.

Tour de Frederick 2023 is Saturday June 10th, and FARC will be providing communications.  We’ll need folks to staff rest stops, Support and Gear (SAG) vehicles, and net control.  As we get closer, we’ll be requesting volunteers – stay tuned.