Outdoor Adventure USA

Ok so I am moving down to San Diego in two weeks. What ham club(s) should I think about joining?

Dennis David wrote:Ok so I am moving down to San Diego in two weeks. What ham club(s) should I think about joining?

Keller Peak Repeater Association. Not exactly SD, but it covers a great deal of the SD area.

I understand that it's important to support our local repeaters but is that really a club in the "traditional" sense? I don;t see any regular meetings / newsletter except for the monthly breakfast.

San Diego DX Club

Dennis David wrote:I understand that it's important to support our local repeaters but is that really a club in the "traditional" sense? I don;t see any regular meetings / newsletter except for the monthly breakfast.

You are correct. It is not a club in the traditional sense and being located in the LA area, it might be a little more difficult to attend meetings. Keller Peak, as you peobably know, is the repeater on which we do our nets, and, depending on where you will be, you can now join us.

Randy's suggestion may be a very good club to associate with. There may also be other clubs that serve the local community that you will be living in and a quick Google will likely turn up the necessary contact information. Good luck!

The DX club looks like a good one when I "graduate" to HF and get my rig. As far as the Keller Repeater, I hope to be able to access it from UTC which is near UCSD. If so then I am sure to join in, especially if the talk turns to foreign travel or photography!

Two very good clubs down here are Sandarc and ECRA. Sandarc conducts most of the amatuer radio testing down here.

SANDARC: http://www.sandarc.net/

ECRA: http://www.ecra.org/

Dennis David wrote:The DX club looks like a good one when I "graduate" to HF and get my rig. As far as the Keller Repeater, I hope to be able to access it from UTC which is near UCSD. If so then I am sure to join in, especially if the talk turns to foreign travel or photography!

Yeah well, if you'd just hurry up and graduate, you just might make some friends in some the destinations you're interested in shooting . It's a great way to make overseas friends and possibly acquire some free accomodations. And with that, an opportunity to actual be the DX rather than the DX chaser.. This happens pretty often in the Amateur Radio world.

My family are members of PARC. We use their repeaters more than all other repeaters. With my roof-mounted base antenna I can hit Keller Peak well, but I'm usually in the mobile or using an HT, otherwise I probably would join KPRA.

I recently joined ECRA (East County Repeater Association at http://www.ecra.org/) just to help support the local repeaters. ECRA holds meetings the first Monday of the month.

ECRA and PARC are the two big repeater groups in the San Diego area. PARC has excellent coverage of north county but I mostly use ECRA's Monument Peak repeater, which has good coverage of the southern desert areas and is linked to most of Arizona via the UHF CalZona system.