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We will be conducting a field day on Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th May. This will be held in the grounds of the Irish Military Museum in Collon, Co. Meath.  We will be operating primarily on phone/voice on the 2m to 160m bands, All QSOs are welcome.  If you are passing, you are invited to call in for a coffee and a chat.

Preparations are underway for Winter Field Day 2024 which is running over the weekend of .January 27th & 28th, 2024  We had a great time last year on in the wind and rain, warmed by a little whiskey and the radiated energy from the home brew 160m Dipole antenna! We actually built and tuned this antenna on-site as we noticed that the field might just be big enough for it. This year we plan on operating voice on HF. If you are taking part and would like to try and organise a sked for a QSO with us, we'd love to hear from you. Stand By for more updates!

OK, it was only a pretend crash, but it was a great scenario for a training exercise. The East Leinster Amateur Radio Club has been out practicing again – remember our “Black Sky” event earlier this year! This time the project was a bit more adventurous. We got together with the Glen of Imaal Mountain Rescue Team (MR) and with Wicklow Civil Defence (CD) to run a combined operation to practice and hone our skills with simulated emergency communications. We also had a guest observer from the Wireless Communications Laboratory at the Tyndall Institute with us. The Glen team responded to an imaginary small aircraft crash in the Ow Valley (just south of Lug na Coille). This carefully chosen location near Aughavannagh had no mobile phone signal, no Tetra radio signal and was very definitely out of line-of-sight for VHF signals. The background to the exercise was to simulate the failure of the Tetra radio system operated by the emergency services, and to assess the feasibility of using HF ...

Introduction On Saturday the 27th of May the members of the East Leinster Amateur Radio Club (ELARC) conducted a Black Sky drill amongst the sunny Wicklow mountains. Some background to the drill. A Black Sky drill is a simulation of a major extended power outage. The power outage can be either man made, such as an electromagnetic pulse, a cyber-attack on the grid or a physical attack on the power distribution network. It can also be caused by a natural phenomenon such as a coronal mass ejection similar to the Carrington event of 1849 which wiped out large sections off the early Telegraph system in the United States. Causing Telegraph stations to burst into flames. Other causes can be winter ice storms, hurricanes, or other major weather events. These black sky events are typically very rare but have a very high impact to the electrical distribution grid. Training Goals This drill is a scripted, Directed Net with some specific training goals: Improve operator message handling skills. Be...

With portable operations being the main focus area for the East Leinster Amateur Radio Club (ELARC), partaking in the Winter Field Day is not a surprise. We set out to establish a station at the Irish Military Museum & Park . Access to the vast camping area was a factor in our success. Located on the north facing side of a hill outside Collon, just inside the Co Meath border. With good take-off for HF DX to the North, East and West. Our setup consisted of several radio systems in the communication tent. We could operate on 160/80/40/20 metre bands. We used homebrew, dipoles, linked dipoles, EFHW , and Clansman military dipole for the 160m band. 80m and 160m antennas were deployed in NVIS fashion. Where the 40m and 20m were a bit higher relative to the wavelength. Our wires were supported by a 10m telescopic mast, a couple of fishing rods and local vegetation. Radios were a standard HAM issue Yaesu FT-857D and FT-891. In total we were able to operate 4 bands at the same time. We did...

We are in the process of planning another 4 Summits (might be just 3, we'll see what happens) on 4m between Christmas and New Years Day.  The summits will be on the east coast of Ireland in Wicklow and/or Cooley Mountains. So QSO's into GW and north east G will be highly probable, especially on 4m.  The primary event date is Thursday 29th Dec. with Friday 30th as an alternate date.  The weather will be the main factor. We'll post an update soon with summit locations and frequency's More info here too https://wiki.oarc.uk/xmas-elarc-portable-day-2022