Our general membership meetings are held on the first Saturday of the month at 1pm (1300 hrs.) Talk-in is available on the 147.120+ MHz and 145.36- repeaters both with a CTCSS tone of 131.8.
While we encourage membership in the club, visitors are always welcome. If you aren't a ham yet but are interested in becoming one, many members are willing to assist you in getting your amateur radio license. In fact, if you aren't yet really interested, but want to know more about our operations and fun, just drop by and say hello!
Want to try operating? You may! You just have to be with one of the club's licensed operators! We have several times during the year and we enjoy having non-licensed personnel operate the station and make contacts, at times around the world! It's fun, and it's free!!!
We have plans for
future implementation of repeaters on most amateur bands including ATV,
with full battery backup for emergency use. We currently have a packet
system with a node (or digipeater) and full service BBS on line for use by
all licensed amateurs and the Santa Barbara County OES. The system
has a 1200 baud user port with a frequency of 145.03 and a 9600 baud
backbone port on 438.95 MHz. This packet station callsign is
"ABBBS" or "W6AB" for the BBS and "SARC" or "W6AB-1" for the node.
The entire system ties into the central California packet system, as well
as providing a link out of the hill bound local area. Future plans
are to become a satellite packet gateway station or "Satgate" and to add a
dxcluster function to the system.
A full-featured HF, VHF, UHF |remote-base ham station |, operated from your computer anywhere in the world, is available to all club members.
The Satellite
Amateur Radio Club held a Special Event to celebrate OSCAR 1's 40th
anniversary on December 8th, and it was a great success. We all had fun,
and even got to talk to some of the original hams involved with OSCAR-1
and the spacecraft that lofted it into orbit. We sent out a beautiful QSL
card done just for the occasion by the local artist, James Williams.
Mr. Williams did our earlier OSCAR certificate and the Arthur C. Clark
certificate, which can be viewed on other pages. He can be
contacted through K1JAN for commissioned works and other artistic
efforts. He has freely supported SARC and its efforts for a long
time, even though he has no ties to the ham community other than his
selfless help and support.