Coastal Plains Amateur Radio Club members have an interest in all areas of the Amateur Radio hobby. Our membership is made up of individuals from all walks of life. We have Radio Club members who enjoy hf, digital communications, space communications, 6 meters, as well as 2 meter.

As a member of the Tall Pines Intertie, a linked VHF repeater system in south Georgia, Coastal Plains continues to provide a repeater that helps fill a gap between Macon and Valdosta Georgia. The Tall Pines Intertie provides amateur operators good communications across south Georgia. There are new sites coming online in the next few weeks if all goes as planned. 

DO YOU QSL?

The Logbook of the World, known as LOTW is an electronic qsl verification system established by the ARRL. A qsl card is not required when you and the contacted station is uploading you logbook pages to LOTW. You my get Worked all States and DXCC Award from ARRL with matching info for stations using LOTW. Several of our membership have used LOTW for over a year. For full information on signing up visit LOTW web pages. Its free to all amateur operators.

Have you made a qsl card for your station? It is easy and not as costly to print cards as you need them. I have used a logbook program that will print a card from my log info. I also used a Word template to print a small quantity to fill out as you would any printed cards.

Once you decide whether to print your own cards or buy them, sending the cards can be costly if you make lots of contacts. I have learned to use the incoming ARRL QSL Buro. You would send a 6x9 envelope to the buro with return postage and your address in the normal address area. When the buro receives enough cards from dx stations the pack 5 to 8 cards in n envelope and mail them to you. You in return mail dx qsl cards out to your contacts through the outgoing buro. This will save on stamp costs.

Other net groups have free buros for contacts made on their nets.  Some of these worked all states nets are Geratol for extra class operators, 3905 century club, yl ssb system, and omiss net. I will look for other nets with buro's. You can really save on your postage costs and get lots of qsl cards. We will get more info about the dx buro's and others. If your interested in more info you may email WD4LYV . My email address is on the roster page.

CONTEST EACH WEEK

 Have you wanted to try a contest and you have a computer in the shack? N4FJP has some great software for most contest. I not only found the software very helpful, It is priced very fair for access to individual contest software or a great price for access to all his software package.

Even if your not a contester, you can log some new DXCC countries during a contest weekend. More info

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Congratulations

Keith Carter, KF4BI, took and passed the Extra Exam at Field Day on Saturday. Way to go Keith.

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Three of our club members who participated in the ARRL Log Book of the World (LoTW) Triple Play Award.  This consist of working all 50 states in three different modes, SSB, CW, and Digital. The award started Jan. 1, 2009 and no contacts prior to that date count. The contacts for this must be verified through LoTW, no paper QSL cards count toward this. You do not have to be a member or ARRL to participate in this, just be a LoTW user.

The members that have already done this are.

Wayne Harrell, WD4LYV, Certificate #27

Bobby Hobby, W4KN, Certificate #37

Glen Bankston, K4KV, Certificate #62

This is an accomplishment for our small club to have members that from all the hams worldwide being #27, 37, & 62 in doing this.

I would like to encourage all of you to start working on this award. It is fun and you will gain a lot of operating experience doing this. Also I would encourage you to become a LoTW user. It is a free service from ARRL. You have a valid confirmation as soon as you upload your log to LoTW and the station you worked uploads their logbook. LoTW checks both logs for a match and gives credit for contact.

If you need more information about LoTW contact the members that have already joined and are using LoTW.

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LEARN DIGITAL MODES

Visit our new Digital Modes page at the operating page. New info about SSTV with a sound card and simple interface.

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UHF REPEATER

There is a UHF Repeater at Sycamore on a 200 ft tower on a 400 ft hill. For now it has an output of 10 watts. Thanks to KF4BI and his Brother in law for the site with Antenna 1 ft below 200 ft at the tip, and Dave N7HRT for the repeater. The repeater is on 444.925 +5 mhz with 141.3 access tone. There is improvements to be made but it is working well.

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Emergency Response Training

As discussed in our club meeting there are some free on line courses that you need to complete to be up to date and become qualified to participate in actual and practice emergency responses. The link below will take you to these courses and you can complete them at your leisure. It is recommended that people who plan to be involved in emergency communications take the IS-100, IS-200, and IS-700 courses. Each online course takes about 3-4 hours to complete. The exam is submitted electronically, and if the exam is passed, FEMA will send the applicant a certificate of successful course completion for documentation.

http://emilms.fema.gov/

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GEORGIA
SECTION
ARRL