[FCARC] 2012 in review

[Craig Szczublewski]

Happy New Year fellow hams!  2012 was a great year for Amateur Radio in Fulton 
County.  We had a lot of fun social and contest outings, as well as public 
service events we participated in this year. Thanks to all club members and 
amateur operators who continue to support and participate in club events.  It is 
our goal to continue to be a great resource for ham radio advocacy.

Club Officers:
Your 2012 officers remained in position, with Bryan Patterson (kb8elg) as your 
club president, Craig Szczublewski (kd8kbu) as your club VP, Angela Infante 
(kb2avn) as secretary, and Lu Ann Kuney (kb2elh) as Treasurer.

Repeater Improvements:
After a lot of hard work and planning, we are now in the new repeater shack.  We 
also have the new CAT 300DXL controller in place, and are starting to lay the 
ground work for integrating IRLP and Echolink into the 147.195 machine.  While 
we have a few maintenance items and some audio tweaks to make, we now have a 
much more comfortable environment to work in.

Education:
KB8ELG conducted two Technician Classes this past spring and autumn at the Delta 
Public Library in 2012.  We thank him and his team for their education efforts.  
The VE Team held 10 test sessions, with 18 new and upgrade licenses issued.  We 
also welcome Tom Servoss as the new VE Liaison and thank Dave Nelson, who is 
stepping down from this position, for his years of service

Events and Community Support:
We had another great Hamfest this year, and actually covered all of our expenses 
as well as made money from the event, thanks to all who continue to come out and 
support our local swap.

We participated for a third year in the Delta Chicken Festival, setting up our 
tri-band antenna and pneumatic mast as well as assisting the Delta Police with 
the Grand Parade on Sunday.

Field Day was a another great event, despite depressed band conditions.  We had 
a lower overall QSO count then the year before, but we had a great opportunity 
to shake out the bugs in our tri-band antenna and mast system.  We ran a 6A with 
697 QSOs for a score of 3350.  We placed 37 out of 122 in Ohio and 26 out of 43 
in the 6A category nationally.

We participated again at the Fulton County Fair in September and want to thank 
everyone who helps out at this event.

The club participated in the Ohio State Parks on the Air contest this year, 
activating Harrison Lake State Park for the first time in the contests history.  
We placed 9th out of 28 participating multi-operator clubs.  We contacted 39 
state parks and look forward to joining the contest in 2013!

We were asked to assist at the Lockport 5k/10k this past October. We had 12 club 
members participating in one of the nicest weather days we've had for this event 
in recent years.

 From the success of the Lockport run, we were asked to assist during the Kellen 
Kaiser memorial run in Fayette.  This was the first year for this event, and I 
think it reflected well on the club at how well we deployed and kept track of 
the runners on a much larger course then Lockport.

Last, we assisted with Archbold Festival of Lights Parade again this year. 
Thanks to all the club members who assisted, we had a good turnout and our 
postings were a bit better organized this year.

Miscellaneous Notes and Accolades:
I can't thank KC8UOM enough for the efforts involved with the pneumatic mast, he 
did a great job managing that project and with the help of his team, were able 
to finish it before Field Day.

Thanks go to KB8ELG who assisted two Fulton Co hams with sizable antenna 
improvement projects.  Both N8HB and K8JPD had some significant tower and 
antenna improvements and Bryan did an excellent job of assembling a team to 
complete these projects in 2012.

See you all at the next regular meeting on the 21st for club officer elections.

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Craig Szczublewski - KD8KBU