VE  Testing  Sessions

The Hog County Amateur Radio Association will begin VE Testing Sessions so that anyone wishing to get into the hobby and get their Technician Class License may do so locally, as well as a licensed operator who wants to upgrade to General or Extra.  Starting Saturday, September 1, 2018 at 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM and the first Saturday of each month thereafter.  For more information or to RSVP for your test please email us at SumterVE@gmail.com

Join us for the Hog County Amateur Radio Association’s monthly breakfast.  The first Saturday of each month usually, we meet at 9:00 AM at Howie’s Family Restaurant in Bushnell, Florida.  During the summer / fall months we have fewer members so we may change our restaurant locations.  If you do want to attend please let us know as we need a head-count in order to reserve the right number of tables as well as to let you know the month’s location.  So shoot us an email to K4HOGFL@gmail.com and RSVP your breakfast spot.

On the third Saturday of the month we may have a lunch meeting. The location for this one changes around from Coyote Rojo Mexican, to Beef O’ Brady’s, Farmer’s Market Restaurant and could go elsewhere so please send an email to K4HOGFL@gmail.com for the latest information or to be placed on the email / mailing list.

Repeater Access

Thanks to Bobby-KX4RS who already provides an EchoLink connection (KX4RS-R) to the 145.490 repeater in Bushnell, FL; we now have an AllStar Network access as well.  So if you do AllStar you can access us via Node Number 46094#.  If you have no idea what we are talking about you may want to make your way over to  https://allstarlink.org and take a look or register.  

Friday Free for All Net – a multi purpose net

We kicked off a new Radio Net on Friday, August 4, 2017 at 8:30 PM and we call it the Friday Free for All Net.  This is a multi purpose net to include a Traders Net, Technical Net, Informational Net and wrapping up with a Rag Chew Net.  We believe our first net was pretty good, we had a total of fourteen (14) on the net and we covered the whole range with the net lasting one hour.  We had operators checking in from Winter Garden, Astor, Dunnellon, Sumter County and a few via EchoLink as well.  So if you are looking for something to do on Friday evenings come on over to the 146.925 / W4OE Repeater in Sumterville, Florida and jump on in for something a bit different.

Weather Ready Nation 

Hog County Amateur Radio Association is proud to be a partner with the National Weather Service by participation in their Weather Ready Nation as an Ambassador here in Sumter County, Florida.  We hope to be able to incorporate weather related information in our events, nets and other areas to the public of Sumter County.  One drawback to being an Ambassador for them is while they have some brochures and flyers we can use, they do not have the budget to provide them for us; we can print off all we want however, that also becomes a cost for us to cover. So we will have to find some funding resources for this.