The next scheduled regular meeting of the Dixie Amateur Radio Club, Inc. will be held at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, August 18, 2010  (Club Meetings are always the third Wednesday of each month except in December). 

Unless otherwise advertised here, our Club's meetings will be held at the St. George Community Building which is located at the far southwest corner of Washington County's Gayle M. & Mary Aldred Senior Citizens Center property which is located at 245 North 200 West, St. George, Utah.    

The next hidden transmitter search exercise known as a "Fox Hunt" has been scheduled for Saturday July 31, 2010.  Everyone should meet at Vernon Worthen Park (300 South 400 East) at 9:00 a.m.

For those interested in participating you can build a tape measure beam (see the info on this below).  Here is some information on other types of RDF units:

There were numerous requests for information on how to build the tape measure beam that was presented at the January 21, 2010 Club Meeting. Please use this link to get all the information you need:  http://theleggios.net/wb2hol/projects/rdf/tape_bm.htm

In addition, there are project plans/kit for the construction of an active attenuator that could be used with the 2 meter tape measure antenna above for fox hunting. You can get information about the attenuators here:   http://www.homingin.com/joek0ov/offatten.html

You are encouraged to join the Dixie Amateur Radio Club or renew your membership for 2010.   Please use the  "Join the Club" link at the bottom of any page on this site to learn how to join the club. Or simply come out to our Club meeting (see info above) and join at that time.  If you are new: " Welcome to the Club!".  To renewing members: "Thank You!"

There is never a bad time to clean out the ol' ham "shack" of those items that really need a new home.  We have had many news ham operators join our ranks at recent Volunteer Exam sessions who may be looking for rigs and all of the ancillary equipment that you may have lying about the shack that could be put to use in the shack of a new ham.

An Amateur Radio operator in  Colorado,  Hamilton Carter, KDØFNR, has created a set of free online exam practice tests that he hopes hams will find useful.

Within the practice tests, online study resources, (Wikipedia, NASA, ARRL, etc.), are provided for many of the questions.  The list of resources available for each question is constantly growing because users can add their own favorite links to the study materials.  Users can also track their test scores over time and see which subelements are giving them the most trouble.

You can see  the practice tests at:   http://copaseticflow.blogspot.com .  Please let Hamilton know if you find it handy, or if you think of any ways to make it better.   His e-mail address is:   hcarter333@gmail.com

Those who have just recently taken and passed an Amateur Radio examination (see below) administered by the Dixie Amateur Radio Club, Inc. at a ARRL-VEC Volunteer Exam session may check the status of your first license or your upgrade by going to American Radio Relay League (ARRL) web site portal that has up to date information directly from the Federal Communications Commission database.  Everyone else can verify the expiration date of your license using this portal.

You can use this link to the ARRL:  http://www.arrl.org/fcc/fcclook.php3   to look up whether your new license is effective (and discover your newly assigned call sign).  You can confirm your upgraded license status (if you took and passed a test to upgrade).   

Another great link is the ULS lookup on the FCC's  web site.  On that site you can print out additional "reference copies" of your license and see the status of your license and any application matters related to it. You can choose to search by name, callsign or your FRN number.   This helpful search page can be found at this link:  http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/searchLicense.jsp

Congratulations are in order to the following individuals that upgraded or passed their initial ham radio license exams at the July 21, 2010 session conducted by ARRL-VEC Accredited volunteer examiners  from the Dixie Amateur Radio Club, Inc.: 

Please welcome these new Amateur Radio licensees (*) to the hobby and also encourage those who just upgraded (#) to take advantage of the additional privileges that their upgrade affords them.  

Webmaster note:  Please note that for new licenses it may take up to several days for the http://www.qrz.com web site to be updated with current FCC information.  In those cases you can use this link:  FCC LICENSE SEARCH  where you can type in your name and/or callsign to view the information that is in the FCC database.      You can click on the "callsign"  link in the table to view more details about this Amateur Radio operator at the QRZ.com web site.