SCHH ARC “This & That” — June 3, 2025

The Weekly Newsletter of the Sun City Hilton Head Amateur Radio Club (SCHH ARC)

Editor – Harve Hnatiuk, KB3FW

Field Day Planning to Continue at June 5th Membership Meeting

Thursday’s Meeting Will Include an Emergency Preparedness and Operations Plan Presentation

ARRL Field Day is less than a month away! Our ARC plans to set up and operate four stations at Lake Somerset on Saturday, June 28th.

Planning will continue following our Membership Meeting on June 5th in the Bayside Room at the Lakehouse. The membership meeting will begin at 7 PM and will be followed by the Field Day Planning Session.

Planning for Field Day began during an hour-long Zoom meeting on May 28th. The planning team identified what radios and antennas will be needed for our operation and discussed site safety, contact logging, and food and beverage among other things.

The co-chairs of the ARC’s Field Day are Bob Officer, WA6WAY and Harve Hnatiuk, KB3FW. They will report on the plans to date at the meeting and lead discussions to continue the planning.

Field Day site layout will be discussed. This aspect of Field Day has been a challenge for us in the past, especially when we have had the CW station and a SSB station on 20 meters at the same time. We’ll look to finalize a good layout of stations and antennas during our planning meeting and learn a bit about antennas at the same time!

A short presentation about our ARC’s Emergency Preparedness and Operations Plan will be a part of the Membership Meeting that will precede the Field Day Planning session.

10m SSB Net Tonight

The SCHH ARC 10 Meter Single Sideband Net will convene this evening at 8 PM on 28.450 MHz. Frank Pollino, K2OS will be calling the net.

Thirteen Colonies Special Event Kicks Off in July!

In just a few weeks, one of the most popular summer operating events kicks off – The 13 Colonies Special Event. Now in its 17 year the event has grown from Special Event Stations making approximately 12,000 contacts to last year making 292, 496 contacts around the world. The Event runs from July 1 9:00 AM -July 7 Midnight Eastern (July 1 – 1300 UTC – July 8 – 0400 UTC).

The Special Event consists of one station operating in each of the 13 Colonies (K2A – K2M) and three bonus stations (WM3PEN – Philadelphia, GB13COL – England, TM13COL – France) each representing their city, state, or countries role in America’s Colonial period.

South Carolina hams use the call sign K2L. Harve Hnatiuk, KB3FW will operate for the third consecutive year. This year, as he did last year, he’ll use the CW and digital modes as well as get local hams on 2m FM. Ed Stratton, W1ZZ plans to be a K2L operator for the first time. There’s room for more operators, especially CW operators, on the K2L team. If you are interested, please contact Scott Putnam, KG9V, who is South Carolina’s Thirteen Colonies organizer and guru (scott.kg9v@gmail.com).

Ham Radio operators and SWLs can participate in the event. Operators can keep an eye out for the special event stations by watching many of the dx spotting networks such as DXSummit.fi.

Complete information about the call for each colony station and the bonus stations can be found on the event website 13colonies.us and everyone can follow the event on Facebook – 13 Colonies Special Event Community. Stations need only make one contact with one of the participating stations or they can go for a Clean Sweep and work all 13 Colony stations and the 3 bonus stations. Each station offers a special QSL card for the event. A Thirteen Colonies certificate is also available. Each year’s certificate is unique. A sample of this year’s certificate is shown below.

A Mighty Storm

Folk music fans might recall Tom Rush’s song “Wasn’t That a Mighty Storm”...good music which you can see performed here.

We had a mighty solar storm over the weekend that had all HF bands shown as “Poor” for both night and day Apparently, there was a huge Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) on Saturday that blasted us with electrons and protons embedded in a magnetic field from a mere 93 million miles away

It isn’t too often that one wakes up on Sunday morning and finds hardly any stations on 20m FT8! Well, that happened this weekend.

This CME was deemed to be the largest one of 2025 and we can only hope that it won’t be topped with another worse event in the months ahead.

Interested In Propagation?

Speaking of propagation, Ed Stratton (W1ZZ) sent this link to “This & That”. This is very informative and viewers can dabble in it or get more detailed information by clicking on its many links and using its references. Thanks, Ed!

More From Dayton

Thanks again to ARC VP Bob Kennedy, N0DQD for the photos from his trip to Dayton.

Veteran CW Operator Gets Eyes Checked

QSL Card of the Week

We haven’t had a “Card of the Week” for awhile. Here’s one that looks to be out of this world courtesy of Bob McCormick, KD8IH.

Bob worked RA9LBH in 1991 on 15m CW!

What’s Coming Up

Thursday, June 5, 2025 — June Membership Meeting and ARRL Field Day Planning Meeting at the Lakehouse. More info above.

Saturday, June 28, 2025 — ARRL Field Day at Lake Somerset. More info to follow in upcoming issues of This & That.

Tuesday, July 22, 2025 –– Planning Zoom Meeting for August 9th’s Parks on the Air Activation at Lake Warren State Park.

Saturday, August 9, 2025 — KE4HAM Parks on the Air Activation at Lake Warren State Park. More info will be in This & That in the coming months.

SCHH ARC Nets

Net News

Wednesday nets are on the 147.135 Okatie Repeater until further notice.

Our nets continue to have a lot of support, which is much appreciated. All SCHH ARC members and licensed friends are invited to join the fun!

Can you help our nets be even greater? Volunteering to be a Net Control Station would be a big HELP. Please let Harve, KB3FW know if you want to give it a try (hnat463@gmail.com).

Weekly SCHH ARC Nets

Sunday’s Net (8 PM) operates on 147.550 MHz simplex on the last two Sundays of the calendar month. The Sunday net will be on the KE4HAM repeater (147.135 + with a tone of 91.5 on both the input and the output) on all other Sundays of the calendar month. Check-in can be done even if you don’t have a radio up and running via EchoLink by using the link KE4HAM-L when the net is on SIMPLEX and KE4HAM-R when the net is on the SCHH Okatie Repeater.

Wednesday‘s Net (8 PM) will operate until further notice on the KE4HAM Okatie Repeater (147.135 + with a tone of 91.5 on both input and output). The net can be accessed via EchoLink using the link KE4HAM-R.

Next 10m SSB Net: Tuesday, June 3rd @ 8 PM Local Time on 28.450 MHz SSB.

Net Control Stations and EchoLink Coordinator

Thanks to our regular 2m Net Controls: Frank Pollino, K2OS; Rick Garan, WA8NLX; and Harve Hnatiuk, KB3FW.

Thanks to Bob Officer, WA6WAY, for being an alternate Net Control Station and overseer of our KE4HAM repeater.

Thanks to Ron Frick, AI4HH, for working diligently to keep EchoLink up and running for our nets.

Net Control Schedule:

— Tuesday, June 3, 2025 @ 8 PM: Frank Pollino, K2OS (28.450 MHz, SSB).

— Wednesday, June 4, 2025 @ 8 PM: Harve Hnatiuk, KB3FW (KE4HAM Okatie Repeater).

— Sunday, June 8th @ 8 PM: Frank Pollino, K2OS (KE4HAM Okatie Repeater).

— Wednesday, June 11th @ 8 PM: Rick Garan, WA8NLX (KE4HAM Okatie Repeater).

— Sunday, June 15th @ 8 PM: Frank Pollino, K2OS (KE4HAM Okatie Repeater).

SCHH ARC Net Reports:

Thanks to ALL who checked in to our SCHH ARC nets last week.

Last week’s check-ins and traffic:

— Wednesday, May 28th 2m Repeater Net: KE4HAM/K2OS, AI4HH, KJ4BSM, WA6WAY, WBIDXN, K2ITZ, N0DQD, KB3FW, W1ZZ, WB4KSG, KO4AQI, AA4KK, KQ4KOO. QNI=13, QTC=0.

— Sunday, June 1st 2m Repeater Net: KE4HAM/K2OS, AI4HH, KJ4BSM, WA2LWO, WB4KSG, WA6WAY, KB3FW, K2ITZ, WA8NLX, WB1DXN . QNI=10, QTC=0.

Note: QNI = Number of Check-ins to the net, including Net Control; QTC = Traffic handled (Radiograms).

Other Operating

Daily —  Monitor the KE4HAM Repeater: 147.135 MHz + with a tone of 91.5. You may get some good DX spots from time to time and other members may be there if you want to connect/chat. If you are listening to the repeater, feel free to announce your call and that you are “monitoring”!