Red River Radio Amateurs

General Admission and Vendor Bundle tickets (i.e. a flea market table and vendor admission) are on sale now in the RRRA online box office.

Your advance purchase gets you to the bargains faster at the Dakota Division’s biggest hamfest.

Don’t waste time in the ticket table line ‼️

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When I meet a newly minted amateur radio operator, I often start by telling them, “You couldn’t be entering our community at a better time!”

And I really mean that.

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The August 2026 Contest Corral is available for download from the ARRL Contest Calendar page.

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Red River Radio Amateurs needs YOU to help make their 2026 Hamfest a success.

There are more than 60 job openings to fill which means that needs every club member to pitch in. Your participation will support a successful hamfest while ensuring that everyone else has their chance to enjoy this event.

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Our 4th Annual Hams In The Park event is on now in Sabin!

July Activity: Hams in the Park
Add this single event to your device
WHEN:
Tue, 21 Jul 2026 19:00 CDT
WHERE:
Sabin, MN, City Park
CONTACT:
Club President
The July 2026 RRRA Meeting will be our 4th annual Hams in the Park event; it’s a Ham Radio show and tell!

Enjoy an interactive experience, eyeball QSOs, and some dessert; no club business will be be discusssed at this meeting!

⚠️ Please RSVP to the Club President by Friday, July 17, 2026, so that we have enough dessert!

You are invited to bring your rig and/or antenna for others to see, and to take a look at what others are using. This is a great opportunity to learn about a rig’s reception capabilities, ease of use, etc.

⭐ There will be no formal presentation; you are welcome to stop by anytime between 5 PM and 8:30 PM.

The July 2026 RRRA Meeting will be our 4th annual Hams in the Park event; it’s a Ham Radio show and tell!

Enjoy an interactive experience, eyeball QSOs, and some dessert; no club business will be be discusssed at this meeting!

⚠️ Please RSVP to the Club President by Friday, July 17, 2026, so that we have enough dessert!

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Hi Folks!

Field Day 2026 is complete and I hope everyone had a successful
activation from either the field or home stations. Again this year we
activated W0ILO as 3A ND from the Cass County Highway Dept in West
Fargo. There was plenty of activity on all the bands, although heavy
QSB kept things challenging. We also had to ride out some
much-needed rain several times during the day.

Due to the gusty winds and a small setup crew, we opted not to put up
the Tribander Yagi this year, sticking to wire antennas and verticals.
We got to use the club's new Tower Trailer, which FM
Ambulance/Sandford Ambulance donated to us. It worked amazingly well,
and one person can easily set it up in under an hour. Teardown with
it is equally easy. It's an amazing asset to our club. We ended up
putting Tim's (K0CRF) Chameleon wire antenna on the tower in a sloper
configuration. We also had a Chameleon vertical also provided by
Tim, and a JPC-12 17 foot vertical I used on 40 meters and 6 meters.

We had a total of 3 operators in the logs this year. Tim K0CRF, Kent
KA0LDG and Erica W7WXR.

Here is our stats for this year,

40 meters CW Total Contacts = 3
20 meters CW Total Contacts = 35
20 meters SSB Total Contacts = 18
15 meters CW Total Contacts = 55
10 meters SSB Total Contacts = 17
6 meters Digi Total Contacts = 35

Total QSOs 163

Kent did all the heavy lifting on 20 and 15 meters CW. Tim got all of
our phone contacts on 10 and 20 meters. I stuck mostly to 6 meters
working FT8, and tried some CW on 40 meters but the band wasn't quite
awake yet. We had a few visitors during the activation including a
reporter from (I believe) WDAY news, as well as our ARRL Assistant
Section Manager, Nancy K0YL. Thank you, Tim, for filling the Public
Info Officer role and speaking with the reporter. If anyone has a
link to the news segment, please share it with the group.

Due to the small crew onsite and threatening weather I decided to skip
the overnight and Sunday operations, and we started teardown around 8
p.m. local time. Again, the tower trailer made this much easier.

Earlier today Seth KC0ODE and Mark KK0V picked up both trailers and
returned them to their storage locations. Thank you both for
transporting those to and from the site. I also got the ARRL Field
Day Bulletin from W1AW copied over RTTY and PSK31.

Just like last year I consider this a very successful Field Day
activation. Also like last year we have some lessons to review to
improve things for 2027. The Tower Trailer makes setup much easier,
however the Tribander requires a larger crew than we had for safe
deployment, especially with moderate winds. We might consider a
lighter antenna that will pair well with the tower trailer, like a
buddy hex antenna. Also, the club's trailer is getting a bit crowded
with items not needed for most activations. Clearing it out to start
set up as well as packing everything back in can be labor intensive
which may deter its use. There are also systems in the trailer,
like power systems, that lack obvious documentation or setup steps.
We always figure it out but it might be nice to ensure easy to follow
setup documentation is available. In future club meetings we would
like to discuss these topics in more detail to improve the user
experience and ensure setup and teardown are easy, especially for a
small number of people, since trends seem to be going that direction.

I'll get our logs submitted to the ARRL in the next few weeks.

Again, thanks to everyone who helped make this activation successful,
and thank you to all those who stopped by, even just to say hi.

73s!
Erica, W7WXR

The July 2026 Contest Corral is available for download from the ARRL Contest Calendar page.

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