Club News
Report from our new VP on the Holiday Party:
"The Aksarben amateur radio club annual holiday party saw 27 members and guests in attendance. There was a wide variety of delicious food including: meat tray/cheeses/smoked sausage/meatballs/salads/chips and desserts. The evening began with a short business meeting to elect officers for the upcoming year followed by a raffle that had the usual great variety of prizes. It was great to see everyone enjoying themselves eating/visiting, and talking about some of our plans for the new year."
de ABØZT
Photos provided by ABØZT
The Annual Meeting was held on December 10 at the Red Cross chapterhouse. At this meeting 2022 club officers and board members were elected - please congratulate the following and thank them for stepping up to lead the Ak-Sar-Ben Amateur Radio Club into 2022.
WØUJO - President
ABØZT - Vice President
KEØOPB - Board of Direcctors / Secretary
NØREA - Board of Directors
After the election were held, club members in attendence enjoyed a potluck dinner and socializing and of course Door Prizes.
Newsletter Editor Brian, WBØBEP took notes on the door prizes and provided the following information.
- The build your own FM Radio kit: I won - WE0BEP (Brian Pitchanau).
- The Electronic Components Kit: NE0G (Russ Rosenquist)
- The Repair Kit: N0POT (Dan Buchholz)
- The YAESU FT-4V Radio: WB0BIK (James Leedham)
- Mr. Reeh: a 1975 Olds Cutlass Car Radio: Our Vice Pres.
2021 sees the Flea-Esta under a new banner as the Ak-Sar-Ben ARC and the Bellevue ARC join forces to bring you
"ARK-BARK"
Saturday October 2nd 2021
9:00 am to 1:00pm
Reed Community Center
1200 Lord Blvd, Bellevue NE
Admission $5 (under 16 are free)
Table Rentals $10 (does not include admission)
The grand door prize will be an
AnyTone AT-868UV dual-band handheld radio
Drawing for the grand prize will be held at 12:00pm.
Additional door prizes
(need not be present to win):
ARRL: One $50 and two $25 gift certificates
N3FJP: Ham Radio Software Package gift certificate
HamTestOnline: 2 Technician, 1 General & 1 Amateur Extra course coupons
The recently discussed patches and decals have arrived.
Current members can get their free patch by picking it up at the August (or any upcoming) meeting.
Additional Patches are $3.00 each and the decals are $2.00 each
If you can't make a meeting and you'd like one of these limited edition decals,
Please send payment along with your Name, Address and how many Decals you want at $2.00 each to
AARC Treasurer
PO BOX 24551
Omaha, NE 68124
Delivery method and potential mailing costs for the patches is still being determined.
Field day this year is on June 26-27. This year’s rules can be found at http://www.arrl.org/field-day#
https://tinyurl.com/dva2jrn8 Both of these links will provide everything you need to know about Field Day 2021.
What is Field Day you say?
Field Day is: "The single most popular on-the-air event". Approximately 35,000 hams across the US and Canada partipicpate. It is held annually on the 4th Weekend in June. For 2021 that will be June 26th and 27th. The event starts at 1:00pm CDT on Saturday afternoon and runs until 1:00pm CDT on Sunday afternoon. It can be a lot of different things depending on the groups and individuals who are particpiating. But the original idea (and its still part of the spirit of the event) is to set up your equipment away from your comfortable home station and already installed antennas, and set up a station or many stations in the field. This would demonstrate our ability to communication in an emergency. Over the years it has become a social event, contest, picnic, and a public relations affair.
Clubs, like the Ak-Sar-Ben Amateur Radio Club, often have equipment like beam antennas, dipoles, towers, generators and lots that they use to set up a multi band multi operate event in a park. Everyone would be invited to stop by, get on the air for a while, learn about amateur radio, eat, socialize and generally just have fun. This type of operation (3 or more hams setting up away from home) was given a designation of "A" or Alpha. Usually AARC would put 5 to 8 stations on the air at the same time. Meaning that K0USA had a Designator of 5A or 8A - the number being the number of stations that could get on the air simultaneously. Every station on site using the same callsign. With the late removal of the 2021 masking and gathering restrictions within Omaha, the AARC was not able to obtain permission to use one of the many parks as we have done in the past.
The contest aspect is a bit more than just how many stations you work, but bonus points are given for using emergency power, setting up in public locations, making a contact through a satellite, copying a special message, sending messages from your field day site to the ARRL Section Manager.
Since Field Day was always about being away from home, stations working from home could participate but were restricted to not being able to work each other for "points". But the ARRL has changed those rules for this year. Hams working from home using commercial power sources are given the designator "D" Usually its a single station so 1D. Again in 2021 "Deltas" can work "Deltas" for points![For 2021 they are limited on power however.] Use your home station, or setup in the back yard even call call CQ Field Day on 2m FM simplex! You might find a LOT of those out there this year. Or if you have a generator or battery capacity, you can still work from home and be an"E" or "Echo" Station.
The ARRL has also recognized that Field Day is in a club's blood. Normally club names are only published for class A and Class F entries - but again in 2021 participants in ANY class can submit their results for the club.. So if DogPatch ARc members Daisy May KZ0XYL and KZ0LIL Abner both participate in Field Day 2021 - Abner from his Class D home station and Daisy May from her car as a Class C Mobile station, When they upload their logs, they can both include their radio radio club name. Their scores will be included in the in the combined score for Dogpatch ARC.
The League has made it easy to do. You upload your log here: https://field-day.arrl.org/fdentry.php and chose "Ak Sar Ben ARC" from the drop down.
There are plans underway [again] for KØUSA to be operated as a 2E or 3E. So KØUSA will still be a presense during Field Day! But YOU can still do field day.
Also email or mail your log to our club secretary Brian Sohl KE0GKB at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. We plan on having certificates and awards for club members who upload or submit their log with the club designation as Ak-Sar-Ben Amateur Radio Club. This year only we will also have certficiates and maybe some prizes and your accomplishments will be recognized in a future issue of HamHum!!
June’s AARC Club presentation is a three member panel presentation on “Valuable and Informative Websites to Improve your Ham Radio Experiences”. The panel will be led by Brian Sohl KEØGKB, Terry BegleyKEØOPB and Pat Connell WØOJU. This online zoom demonstration will highlight the merits of these websites as well as a brief demonstrations of each website.
- de WØOJU President AARC
The meetings of the AARC are currently being held via Zoom, on the 2nd Friday of each month at 7:00 pm.
If you are not a club member and would like an inviation to attend the Zoom Program - send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.and we will send you an email after 4:00pm on Friday June 11th.
The monthly meeting of the Ak-Sar-Ben Amateur Radio Club will be held on Friday March 12, 2021 at 7:00 pm. Due to building access restrictions at the Red Cross, the meeting will be held via Zoom. Members should watch their email for the link to join the meeting. Our meeting are open to everyone, so if you are not an AARC member and would like to attend you can sign up at this link. <Signup for AARC Meeting>
The program for the evening will be ARRL Midwest Division Director Art Zygielbaum, KØAIZ. Art will us up to date with all the happenings at the League and will do his best to answer our questions.
Amateur radio is all about community. Icom knows that ham clubs play a big role in bringing hams together to network and learn from one another on an ongoing basis. As a way of giving back, Icom has launched a promotion exclusively for ham clubs and the Ak-Sar-Ben Amateur Radio Club has been chosen as one of those clubs!
The February 12 Ak-Sar-Ben ARC meeting will once again be held on ZOOM and starts at 7:00 pm (club members will be getting an email with the Zoom information) 
The program will start at 7:30pm. The program will be presented by Will Jourdain AA4WJ of ICOM America. One of Will's topics will be the new IC-705 QRP Portable Radio. He will discuss some of the unique technical aspects of the 705's interface and I/O and also on many of the features of the radio, which include DSTAR and WLAN/Bluetooth. There will be time for questions and answers
Club members will get the link to the Zoom meeting via the email that they have on file with the membership secretary. If you aren't getting those emails.. reach out to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to ensure you have provided them with your latest email address.
Non-club members are welcome to attend the program and can sign up here https://tinyurl.com/AARCFeb2021 to be sent the link to the meeting. The invitation to non-members will be sent out after 4:00pm on 02/12/2021