The STARS 440 repeater will be down for maintenance, until further notice. Thanks for your patience.

STARS Next Monthly Meeting

NEW The next regular STARS monthly meeting will be on Friday May 9th, 2008 at 19:30 CDT. The topic will be Antenna Design presented by Gregg AB9MZ. It will include a lot of slides followed by group discussions. Remember to bring your favorite antenna books and ideas for what antenna you might want to see the group build, tune, and Test at the June meeting. A handout from NIST will be given with regards to radio wave propigation. Feel free to review An Overview of Radio Wave Propigation.. Also look at NIST Time and Frequency Services. Both are fairly short and fairly quick to read through.

The May and June meetings will focus on antenna deisng culminating in members building their own antennas to take home and use. We will decide which antenna project we will build as a group in the May meeting. The building will take place in June.

Please make sure to send your favorite antenna books or construction articles to Gregg, who will compile a list to be handed out at the April meeting. Please include title, author, ISBN, publication date, or other relavent information for the Antenna Construction Bibliography. One of my personal favorate books is "

Our new members only area, announcement mailing list, web based mailing list archive, electronic payment system for donations collection of dues using Paypal will be debued at the April meeting..

STARS VE Testing

NEW Our next VE testing session is this Saturday, May 24th, 2008. The VE testing session will start promptly at 09:00 CDT. Walk-ins are welcome until 10:30 CDT. See the Licensing tab above for details, location, costs, documentation, and identification requirements.

2007 STARS Holiday Raffle Winner

Rich KA9HMV was the Winner of the Yaesu FT-2800M radio at the December 2007 STARS holiday gathering. Pirctured below are Rich KA9HMV (right) who was the STARS Radio Raffle Winner holding Yaesu FT-2800M radio and our fine president Tom KA9ZXN (left). See here for technical details on the Yaesu FT-2800M.

Make Suggestions for a Presentation or Offer to be a Presentor

Do you have an idea for a presentation for the next meeting, are you willing to makes presentation on a topic that is near and dear to your heart, or do you have ideas for or content for the web site. Then drop an email to ab9mz@arrl.net. Remember this is your club too. Participate and make a differance.

Weekly Nets

All licensed Amateur Radio Operators are welcome to check-in to our general Sunday night net at 19:00 and our weekly Skywarn net on Wednesday nights at 19:00. We have decided to run the Skywarn net year round, since bad weather can occur at any time in any season.

Winter Weather

Citerea for making Winter Weather Skywarn Reports

• More than one inch per hour of snow accumulation.
• Thunder and / or Lightning, which generally indicates at least two to three inches of snow will occur in the next few hours.
• Freezing rain or sleet.
• Blizzard conditions, more than one inch of snow combined with greater than 35 mile per hour winds.
• Ice on streets, power cables, or tree braches greater than 1/4 inch thick
• Power lines, trees / tree branches, or structural damage due to significant accumulations of ice or snow.
• Excesive flooding from melting snow.

Winter is here, it is vital to remember that families come first, so make sure you have your family, home, and automobiles perpared for extreme cold, blizzards, sleet, ice, and what ever Mother nature can muster up and through our way. Take a look at the CDC web site article Extreme Cold: A Prevention Guide to Promote Your Personal Health and Safety.