NARL Club 2011 General Meetings:
7:00 pm at the Newington Senior Center
120 Cedar Street, Newington
First Monday of every month except holidays
Board of Directors Meetings: as announced by President.
NARL Club Sanctioned Events for 2012:
- February 6 - Mon. - Monthly NARL General Membership meeting, 7 pm at the Newington Sr. Center. Guest Speaker: Alan Pitts, W1AGP, ARRL Media and Public Relations Manager.
- March 5 - Mon. - Monthly meeting.
- April 2 - Mon. - Monthly meeting.
- May 7 - Mon. - Monthly meeting.
- June 4 - Mon. - Monthly meeting.
- June 16 - Sat. - 2012 NARLFEST at St. Mary's School, 8am to 1 pm.
- June 23-24 - NARL FIELD DAY at Cedarcrest, Newington
- July - (To Be Announced)
- August 6 - Monthly Meeting
- September 10 - 2nd Mon due to Labor Day - Monthly Meeting
- October 1 - Mon. - Monthly Meeting
- November 5 - Mon. - Monthly Meeting
- December 3 - Mon. - Monthly Meeting
2012 Public Service Events, communications provided by NARL
The Newington Amateur Radio League (NARL) provides as a public service, free of charge, volunteers for communications. In the recent past, we have provided comms for charity walks and races, river regattas, bike and motorcycle rides, outdoor events and parades.
Our volunteers are trained communicators with their own radios who can assist anyone coping with large crowds, cell phone "dead zones", or busy organization leaders who don't have enough hands or ears to deal with the flood of messages they receive and send during a large event.
Please contact our Public Service Team for info.
- Sun. May 20 - Lucy Robbins Welles Library 5K Road Race. NARL provides radio communications for this event. See any member of the NARL public service committee to volunteer. Click logo below for flier.
- Sat. July 28 - Scottish Rite Freemasons 5K Run/Walk to benefit Children with Dyslexia - 9 am in Newington. Click here for the flyer. Contact any member of the NARL public service committee to volunteer.
- Sun. Sept. 30 - Riverfront Regatta. NARL provides radio communications on the Connecticut River in Hartford. Volunteers needed.
For details on other events, contact Armando Landrian, KB1PRP@arrl.net.
Other Events of interest to Hams
- 3rd Saturday of every month: Free Mini-hamfest at Lentini Communications. Free flea-market, guest speaker, radio and antenna diagnostic clinic.
- Monday Night Elmer Net - 7 pm, beginning Jan 30 on the ICRC linked repeater net. Topics will include: Skywarn (Jan 30); ARES (Feb 6); RACES/MARS (Feb 13) and many more. All are welcome. Transcripts will be posted on www.icrcweb.org
- Feb 4-5 Mark Twain Klondike Derby, radio comms by ICRC, seeking volunteers from other clubs. Get info at www.icrcweb.org
- May 16 - Wed - SKYWARN training, 7-10 pm, Community Center, 40 Dyer Avenue, Canton, CT. This will be the only Tolland Country NWS training session this year. New spotters will be trained and registered. All existing spotters welcomed to refresh their knowledge and renew their registration.
- June 9 - Sat. - Jim Calhoun Cancer Challenge - Connecticut Region 3 ARES leads a team of ham operators who track the lead and tail bike riders and dispatch supplies, mechanics and SAG wagons during this multi-route walk/ride charity event. It's time to volunteer for this year. Please contact George Lillenstein, AB1GL@arrl.net, to volunteer.
COMPLETED NARL EVENTS 2011:
January 3, Monday - Installation of Officers Dinner - 6 pm, Paradise Pizza, East St. & South St, New Britain. The 2011 elected officers were sworn in and presentations were made of plaques and certificates of appreciation. Section Manager Betsey Doane attended and gave out ARRL calendars to the appointed ARES officials present.
January 8, Saturday - VE exam session at ARRL headquarters. Contact Steve Ewald, WV1X for details.
Tuesday, January 25th - NARL Board of Directors Meeting, ARRL (League) HQ, 6:30 pm
January 29, Saturdays - FCC License prep classes begin at the VFW on East Center Street in Manchester, CT, USA. Contact Ted Ferreira, WA1NXC, 860 643-1502.
February 7 - General Meeting at Newington Senior Center, 7 pm. Scheduled speaker: Armando Santos, partner in Cables and Connectors, Inc. speaking on "What's New in Electronic Gadgetry, Kits and Computer Stuff..."
February 5 & 6 - Klondike Derby at the June Norcross Webster Boy Scout camp in Ashford, CT. Saturday 8 am - 5 pm, Sunday 8 am - 1 pm. Wear warm clothes. Bring 2m HT and spare batteries, your own food and water. Some positions will have a fire available. Contact the NARL Public Service team for additional instructions. For map and directions, www.jnwebster.org.
March 7 - General Meeting at Newington Senior Center, 7 pm. Speaker, Alex Lentini, proprietor of Lentini Communications in Berlin, CT. Alex introduced three inexpensive ($89 - $129) HT's now carried by HamPro affiliates. They are made in China and Lentini sells the FCC type certified models and includes the software to program them from a computer. He also reviewed an all-digital, self-programming Uniden scanner. And if you were outside the senior center a few minutes before the meeting, you were treated the the sight of the Space Shuttle and the ISS zooming almost directly overhead in tandem.
March 26, Saturday - Scantic Spring Splash Canoe and Kayak Race See Carman Landrian's excellent photos of this event in the Public Service scrapbook
April 4 - General Meeting at Newington Senior Center, 7 pm. This meeting will include the return of a long-lost feature of our meetings, the "Help Connection" Q&A session. Anybody can stand up and ask a question as long as it is related to Amateur Radio. The club will do its best to come up with an answer. Best way ever to tap the collective wisdom of experienced hams from many towns.
May 2 - General Meeting at Newington Senior Center, 7 pm. Guest speaker: Eric Knight, KB1EHE. The self-styled "futurist, inventor, entrepreneur, and business pioneer" signed copies of his book, "The New Race to Space" about the first all-civilian rocket to successfully reach space, available from Amazon. He gave a fascinating presentation about his volunteer team's Herculean efforts to deal with the details involved in the launch, from bureacratic red tape to clear the flight path, to frantic last-minute improvisation when the parts wouldn't fit together, to the complex measurements and calculations of wind layers to get the correct launch angle.
Monday May 9 - 7 pm - Skywarn Spotter Training, Granby Sr. Center, 15 North Granby Rd. Almost 80 spotters attended, including new hams and others. This was the Taunton session.
May 10 - Saturday - Board of Directors Meeting to consider scholarship applications and other matters. 6:30 pm at the ARRL HQ in Newington.
Thursday May 12 - 6:30 pm - Skywarn Spotter Training, Winsted Town Hall. Preregistration required on the NWS-Albany web site.
Friday May 13 - 7 pm - Skywarn Spotter Training, Colchester Hayward Fire Department, 52 Old Hartford Road, preregistration required on the NWS-Upton web site.
Sunday May 15 - Soapstone Mountain Trail Race -- ARES Region 3 provided radio communications to the Shenipsit Striders for this race, the 5th in the Grand Tree Trail Race Series. The staging point was the Reddington Rock Riding Club on Handel Road, Stafford Springs, CT. Comms began on the KB1AEV repeater but moved to a simplex frequency once our Yagi antenna was in place. Since there was no public presence, only race participants who had signed waivers, this event was not run using ICS protocol. Frequency and location assignments were made on the fly as volunteers showed up. We ended up covering all the needed locations and had solid point-to-point simplex comms in spite of the rain, padlocked gates, and other obstacles. Thanks to KB1ONM, AB1RB, KB1JKA, and W1RCT for their stalwart assistance.
Sunday May 15 - Lucy Welles 5k Challenge in Newington. Radio Comms by NARL. See Carmen Landrian's photos in the Public Service scrapbook.
Boy Scout S.W.A.M.P. -- each spring, the NARL club erects a working ham special event station in the pavillion at Mill Pond in Newington and helps Scouts earn their radio merit badge.
June 6 - General Meeting at Newington Senior Center, 7 pm.
June 7 - NARL NITE OUT at the New Britain Rock Cats. See home page for details.
June 18th NARLFEST - The third Saturday of June the NARL club sponsors a hamfest held at St. Mary's School on Willard Avenue in Newington. This includes many valuable door prizes, an outdoor radio flea market, indoor vendor tables, seminars, FCC exam session, event station, and a Region 3 ARES meeting. See www.narlfest.net for details as date approaches. This event is the major source of funding for the club's annual Scholarship program and other public service. It is also a convenience for Connecticut hams, as it is always held the week before ARRL Field Day and brings a great number of ham-related vendors to a single place for last-minute shopping.
June 25-26 ARRL FIELD DAY - the NARL club pitches their Field Day site on the grounds of Cedarcrest Hospital. This is a 24-hour-long contest during which local clubs erect a temporary station "off the grid" and proves to the public their ability to contact other communities via radio during an emergency. Some clubs own portable antenna towers; the NARL club erects a wire beam antenna between tall trees and operates off portable generators and solar-charged batteries.
July 9 (Saturday) - Annual Picnic and Monthly Meeting, Churchill Park in Newington, 11:30 am - 3 PM - Rt. 176 (Main Street), 1/2 mi north of Berlin Turnpike. Each summer, the NARL club holds a picnic open to all hams, at Churchill Park in Newington. The club provides hot dogs, hamburgers, and soda; everything else is pot luck.
Sat July 23 - Scottish Rites 5K - 207 Deming Street, the Scottish Rites temple behind the Newington Plaza on the Berlin Turnpike. Dale Cunningham is the liaison between NARL and the race sponsors. NARL and New Britain CERT provided route monitors, sweep and SAG vehicles. New this year: hams provided runners with unofficial split times as they passed each mile marker.
August 28 - Sunday - Quartette Club Charity Motorcycle Ride. NARL provided radio communications.
September 8-11 2011 -- Lion's HebronHarvest Fair -- The NARL club had a booth at the fair with a live Event Station with rotatable beam antenna and handsome display panels explaining Amateur Radio to the public. Thanks to Ted Ferreira, Rich and Rose-Ann Lawrence, Al Gerke, and all the other volunteers who contributed to setting up and running the booth.
October 15 - Saturday - Hartford Marathon - NARL contributed volunteers for this public service.
October 25 - NARL Board of Directors Meeting, 6:30 pm, ARRL Headquarters, Newington, CT
November 6 2011 - Veterans Parade in Hartford - radio comms by NARL, see the Public Service team for details and to volunteer. Click HERE for parade map.
ALSO Nov. 6: Riverfront Regatta in Hartford - radio comms by NARL.
November 7 - General Meeting at Newington Senior Center, 7 pm. Al Cohen brought a recording of a Jean Shepherd WOR-radio broadcast during which he recounted the hilarious tale of his WWII radar technicians unit being taught morse code by the Army. Jean Shepherd, amateur call K2ORS, was a masterful story teller who built a cult following on late night talk radio and had a long and successful career as an author and raconteur. Other business at the meeting included nomination of the 2012 NARL Officers slate and reports from the Riverfront Regatta and Hartford Veteran's Parade public service.
December 5 - General Meeting at Newington Senior Center, 7 pm. Members related their activities using ham radio during Storm Alfred and the ARES SET.
2012 completed events
January 16 - NARL Inaugural Ceremony at the Paradise Restaurant in New Britain. The 2012 elected officers were introduced, the Ham of the Year Award and service recognition certificates presentations were made. N1TUP gave out the door prizes: three ARRL publications. Al Cohen, NARL Activities Chair, celebrated his birthday (the fire marshal wouldn't let us light that many candles, but we did sing "Happy Birthday").
The NARL club made a presentation to Donna Miller, director of the Lucy Wells Newington Library, which will be receiving a donation of the ARRL library selection of publications, made by the NARL club.