Local Radio Clubs
BARC – Benicia Amateur Radio Club
The Benicia Amateur Radio Club (BARC) is an active group of Ham Radio operators with a slant towards Emergency Communications, working under the umbrella of Solano County’s Auxiliary Communications Service (ACS) organization, and the Benicia Fire Department.
DARC – Delta Amateur Radio Club
DARC has its meeting in Pittsburg located in East Contra Costa County. Their mission is to hold club meetings for the social, educational and promotional advancement of the Amateur Radio Service. They are a great group of people!
CCCC – Contra Costa Communications Club
The “Four Cs” runs an open repeater located in San Pablo, California. It is not unusual to get stations checking-in from as far west as the Sierras, up north well into Sonoma County, and decent coverage throughout San Francisco and the North Bay.
Founded in 1952 the Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service is fed and cared for by FEMA. RACES works principally at the local level through local and state civil defense agencies organized by state government to provide emergency communications in the event the FCC authorizes its use.
EBARC – East Bay Amateur Radio Club
The East Bay Amateur Radio Club (EBARC) in Richmond, California was founded over 50 years ago by a group of local amateur radio operators. While their purpose is mainly social, club members provide a variety of services to the community including: teaching ham radio and electronics classes, conducting ham radio license examinations, and providing emergency communications services and radio communications for public events. EBARC maintains a club station in Richmond, complete with several HF transceivers, tower-mounted yagi antennas, VHF/UHF stations for local emergency communication, our own off-the-grid power source, and a packet station.
KARO ECHO is the acronym for the Kensington Amateur Radio Operators (KARO) and the El Cerrito Ham Operators (ECHO) mutual benefit association, an all-volunteer non-profit tax deductible organization of amateur radio operators providing auxiliary communications for the cities of Kensington and El Cerrito in the event of a disaster. KARO ECHO works with CERT (Community Emergency Response Teams) in Kensington and El Cerrito, but is not an official part of the CERT program.
The KARO ECHO Training Net is every Thursday evening at 1900 (or after the WCCC RACES net, whichever is later) at 146.415 MHz Simplex.
KARO ECHO meets in-person on the 2nd Monday of each month at 1900 (7:00 PM) in at Arlington Park Clubhouse.
LARK – Livermore Amateur Radio Klub
The Livermore Amateur Radio Klub was incorporated on July 30, 1959, as a nonprofit association of persons commonly interested in amateur radio. LARK serves the communities of Livermore, Pleasanton, and Dublin California, and the surrounding Tri-Valley area. LARK is also affiliated with the American Radio Relay League (ARRL).
MDARC – Mount Diablo Amateur Radio Club
The Mount Diablo Amateur Radio Club (MDARC) was founded in 1946. Today it has a membership of over 300 dedicated hams and is one of the largest amateur radio clubs in California. MDARC’s purpose is to encourage innovation in amateur radio, provide public service and educational opportunities, foster good will within our community, and have fun in the process. MDARC provides a wide variety of programs and activities for its members. These include hosting and staffing Pacificon (ARRL Pacific Division convention) each October, bringing in great speakers and offering ham radio classes to the public.
MARS – Marin Amateur Radio Society
The Marin Amateur Radio Club was founded in 1933 by a rather local group of radio operators for the purpose of comradeship and associating with others in Amateur Radio. Whether you are already a licensed amateur, or would just like to learn more about ham radio, take a look around the website, click on a few links of interest on the Resource page, or contact us with questions.
ORCA – Oakland Radio Communications Association
The Oakland Radio Communication Association (ORCA) is an amateur radio organization dedicated to furthering the amateur radio hobby. It consists of members from Oakland, Alameda, Piedmont and other cities in the immediate area.
CARUN / VERA – California Amateur Radio Users Net/ VERA – Valley Emergency Repeater Association
The California Amateur Radio Users Net (CARUN) was founded in 1991 to provide repeater communications, service, and technical enjoyment for Hams, interested individuals, etc. Their system has always been open to all licensed Amateur Radio Operators, but accommodating ARES and RACES groups.
The Valley Emergency Repeater Association (VERA) was founded February 2010 originally formed to service the Bald Mt repeater on Tancred, CA. This technical service group consists of the following hams: Dick AA6DF, Roberto KJ6CCH, David N6QDY, Steve WA6HAM and Jeff WB6DKX.
Yolo Amateur Radio Society (YARS)
The Yolo Amateur Radio Society (YARS) is primarily a public service oriented club assisting with communications for many public events around the Sacramento Valley. These events include the Davis Double Century Bicycle Ride, Foxy’s Fall Bike Ride, and many other local and regional events.
W6BB – U.C. Berkeley Amateur Radio Club
Since April 2011, the University of California Berkeley radio club, W6BB, runs a monthly emergency communication net. The net takes place each first Wednesday of the month (at noon) immediately after the siren tests on the UC Berkeley campus. There are two net check-ins: 1) On repeater N6BRK: 440.9+ Mhz, PL 131.8 Hz; 2) On the Cal Bears 2m calling frequency: 146.430 Mhz simplex. They encourage all licensed radio amateurs in the Berkeley area (on and off campus) to participate.
NARCC – Northern Amateur Relay Council of California
The Northern Amateur Relay Council of California, Inc. (NARCC) is the Amateur Radio coordinating organization for the 10 meter band and higher in northern California. In cooperation with the FCC, ARRL, and the support of the hams in northern California, NARCC performs the repeater coordination function for the region. NARCC’s region extends from California’s coast to the Nevada border and from Tehachapi in the south to the Oregon border in the north. All amateurs with repeaters in the region are urged to file for Coordination and maintain their station data with NARCC.
Useful Amateur Radio Links
The FCC ULS License Search enables you to search for a wide range of licenses in the Universal Licensing System. The License Search provides access to the most basic attributes of a license. You can also specify more attributes combinations with the Advanced Search and search within services like Amateur using service-specific criteria. Please be aware that some combinations of search criteria may result in a longer wait.
QRZ.COM contains an extensive callsign database, headlines, news, events, discussions, blogs, Q&A, swapmeets, hamfests and club information. It is a good general source of information.
ARRL – National Organization of the American Radio Relay League
Founded in 1914, The American Radio Relay League is the national association for Amateur Radio in the USA. Today, with more than 156,000 members, ARRL is the largest organization of radio amateurs in the United States.
Radio History
MRHS – Maritime Radio Historical Society
The Maritime Radio Historical Society (MRHS) is a small group of dedicated individuals who share the goals of documenting, preserving and restoring the artifacts of maritime radio history. Their area of specialization is the coast stations, ships and companies of the west coast of the United States, however anything to do with maritime radio anywhere in the world is of interest to us. Dedicated MRHS volunteers are busy with the preservation, restoration and repair of the historic artifacts. Their goal is to assure that the culture, techniques and traditions of the men and women who came before us are not forgotten.
CHRS – California Historical Radio Society
The California Historical Radio Society (CHRS) is a non-profit corporation that was formed in 1974 to promote the restoration and preservation of early radio and broadcasting. Their goal is to provide the opportunity to exchange ideas and information on the history of radio, particularly in the West, with emphasis in collecting, literature, programs, and the restoration and display of early equipment.
Blogs, News, and Other Interesting Sites
Public Safety Advocate News from Andy Seybold – W6AMS
Andrew Seybold is one of the world’s leading authorities on technology and trends shaping the world of wireless mobility. Mr. Seybold is a respected analyst, consultant, commentator, author and active participant in wireless industry trade organizations and is widely known throughout the wireless communications industry for his keen perspective as well as his track record for accurately predicting trends in mobile wireless technology and convergence. Andrew Seybold’s COMMENTARY is possibly the most widely read e-newsletter among executives of leading wireless network operators.
Daryl Jones, K6TEA, has been following public safety communications systems nationwide and, in particular, the San Francisco Bay Area. He and his associates design, build, maintain, and manage radio, telephone and data communications systems for the police, fire and emergency medical sector, and are contractually responsible for more than 25 E911 dispatch centers, hundreds of base stations, dozens of radio sites and 80 fire stations in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Founded in 1936, Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth, PLC provides comprehensive legal services in the field of telecommunications. Their attorneys are experts in broadcast law, telephony, fixed and mobile wireless communications, license-exempt communications, satellite services, Internet law, domestic and international telecommunications, and spectrum management issues. Their blog is committed to ensuring that its clients are successful participants in this rapidly evolving global telecommunications marketplace.
Brian Krebs worked as a reporter for The Washington Post from 1995 to 2009, authoring more than 1,300 blog posts for the Security Fix blog, as well as hundreds of stories for washingtonpost.com and The Washington Post newspaper, including eight front-page stories in the dead-tree edition and a Post Magazine cover piece on botnet operators. In 2014, he was profiled in The New York Times, Business Week and by Poynter.org.
The Federal Communications Commission launched in January 2015 a new online consumer help center that will more efficiently link consumers to the information they need, as well as make it easier for consumers to file complaints and get responses to their concerns. The consumer help center is part of the FCC’s broader efforts to reform its processes to better serve the public.
TWiT.TV is a online video program that stands for This Week in Tech. It features a variety of technology subjects which may be of interest, including the programs HAM Nation and This Week in Radio Tech.
- HAM Nation – Join the host, Bob Heil, with various co-hosts and guests, will cover the excitement and importance of ham radio – from tossing an antenna wire in a tree allowing you to talk to the world, to the importance of ham radio operators in time of disasters. HAM Nation airs live each Tuesday at 6:00 p.m. PT on http://live.twit.tv.
- This Week in Radio Tech – Join the host, Kirk Harnack, along with co-hosts Tom Ray, Chris Tobin, and Chris Tarr, as they feature sage audio advice for broadcast engineers, “There I was…” stories, and instruction from some of the sharpest minds in audio media technology today. This Week in Radio Tech airs live each Tuesday at 5:00 p.m. PT on http://live.twit.tv.
TV Fool offers several resources here relating to over-the-air (OTA) broadcast services (TV, FM, and others). They have a variety of online tools, downloadable content, reference information, and discussion forums to help users learn, understand, and make informed decisions about the OTA services available to them.
The SWLing Post is a blog which deals, among many things. international broadcasting news, interviews, how the internet influences radio broadcasters, the history and future of shortwave radio, and shortwave radio reviews.
Blitzortung.org is a lightning detection network for the location of electromagnetic discharges in the atmosphere (lightning discharges) based on the time of arrival (TOA) and time of group arrival (TOGA) method. It consists of several volunteer supported lightning receivers and one central processing server. The stations transmit their data in short time intervals over the Internet to the server. Every data sentence contains the precise time of arrival of the received lightning discharge impulse (“sferic”) and the exact geographic position of the receiver. With this information from all stations the exact positions of the discharges are computed and displayed within seconds on a map that shows lightning activity worldwide and regionally.
Weather West has provided unique California weather and climate discussion since 2006.
Dr. Daniel Swain currently holds concurrent research appointments in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles; the Capacity Center for Climate and Weather Extremes at the National Center for Atmospheric Research; and The Nature Conservancy of California. As a climate scientist, he studies the changing character, causes, and impacts of extreme meteorological events. Daniel holds a PhD in Earth System Science from Stanford University and a B.S. in Atmospheric Science from the University of California, Davis. His full curriculum vitae is available here.
The Bay Model Visitor Center is a fully accessible education center administered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers which makes possible the viewing of a scientific tool: a working hydraulic model of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento – San Joaquin River Delta System.
The Model provides scientists, educators and citizens interested in San Francisco Bay and the Bay – Delta Model a unique opportunity to view the complete bay-delta system at a glance. The Center gives an introduction and provides an overview of the system. Tours are available for groups with advanced reservations. These tours can be tailored to the technical level of the group. The Corps of Engineers encourages use of the Visitor Center by scientific and technical groups for meetings and seminars provided certain criteria are met. The manager of the Visitor Center my be contacted regarding such use at (415) 332-3871.
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