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Today, there are
close to 60 members, not bad for a time where amateur radio competes
with computers and the Internet as a high tech hobby. The Southwest
Dallas County Amateur Radio Club has been very active in its
communities. The club has assisted in numerous bicycle rallies over
the years for the City of Duncanville and lately for the Cedar Hill
Rotary Club’s Head for the Hills bike rally. All of the assistance
was in the communications portion of the events, right up our alley.
The club has also donated books for the libraries in Duncanville,
DeSoto, Cedar Hill, Lancaster and Grand Prairie to assist
interested people in getting their amateur radio license. We also
have donated time and money to other civic projects such as the
Plant-a-bed at Armstrong Park in Duncanville.
Along with the
community service, we also have found time for other projects such
as participation in the National ARRL Field Day each June, achieving
the top score for the 3A category in the West Gulf Division in 2006
(coming in 5th overall in class 3A) as well as attending
various Ham Conventions throughout the area. Our club has had
numerous members participate in the Texas QSO party each year and
enjoy contesting as a club. We have had transmitter hunts until
everybody got too proficient in finding the "fox" and are always
finding that amateur radio has a lot of things to choose from. This
club also has a strong VEC program of which administers tests to
those prospective hams as well as those already licensed in their
upgrade efforts. We also have a weekly net on the two-meter repeater
on Monday at 8:00 p.m. All licensed amateurs (members or not) are
encouraged to participate.
We are a family
oriented organization as well. We have a covered dish dinner at the
annual Field Day on Saturday evening that brings the whole family
into our activities. We have had other activities such as a chili
cook-off and plan on having similar events in the future. Both
husband and wife can be heard on our repeaters as well as at the
membership meetings. It is not limited to the parents as we also
enjoy the children involved with the club as well. Every aspect of
Amateur radio can be found practiced by some member of SWDCARC such
as ATV, CW, SSB, PSK31, packet, contesting, QRP, RTTY or satellite
to name just a few.
We invite you to
attend one of our general membership meetings to find out more about
SWDCARC. Our general membership meetings are very little "business
meetings" as that is mostly done at the Board Meetings. We always
have an interesting program at our general membership meetings and
encourage you to attend!
73!
SWDCARC
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