Welcome to the home page of the Boring Amateur Radio Club - K7RAT.
The Boring Amateur Radio Club has decided to become internationally known by calling as much attention to itself as possible. Recent accomplishments include having its first three newsletters published in full in the NCJ - thus having a distribution exceeding that of the PVRC, YCCC, Frankford and the WVDXC - combined!
Special Announcement (posted 16 May 2001)
The Boring Amateur Radio Club is pleased to announce the creation of a
tax deductible fund, which will be used to help defray the travel expenses for young USA hams who will be participating in WRTC-2002.
The ARRL Foundation will administer this fund. The name of the fund is WRTC USA YOUTH FUND. Tax deductible contributions can be mailed to
ARRLF; 225 Main Street; Newington, CT 06111. The ARRLF holds 501(c)(3) status. Contributions of $25 or more will be recognized in QST.
WRTC participants who will be 25 years old, or less, during the event will be able to apply for reimbursement of up to $1000 of their travel
expenses to and from the event. If insufficient funds are available, the payments will be evenly proportioned. If funds are left over, they
will be made available for the next WRTC event.
More information about the ARRL Foundation can be found at the website
www.arrl.org/arrlf. More information about the Boring Amateur Radio Club can be found at web.jzap.com/k7rat.
Here is a chance to help invest in our future. We hope that this fund will encourage our younger contesters to apply for consideration as a
participant.
The Boring Amateur Radio Club is NOT a paper club. We would rather think of it as a cyber club. The internet can bring people together like no monthly meeting can. We feel the intent of a club is to foster associations between people with a common interest, and to encourage activity. These are goals the BARC has is common with any other contest club. We challenge any club to match our energy and DXCC totals on bands with a six in them (from the Pacific Northwest that is)
The activities of the club station - K7RAT - are starting to be noticed by the general ham population and the call now causes people to turn off their radios when hearing it in a pileup. There is even one station who says they will remove any QSOs with this callsign from their log - since this is an obvious case of callsign abuse.
The Boring Amateur Radio Club is involved in two major Amateur Radio events: The Stew Perry Topband Distance Challenge and the Kid's Day Contest. The Kid's Day event has exceeeded our wildest dreams and has been adopted by the ARRL now. However, the club is still involved in administrating the web presence and the distribution of the certificates. For more information on these two events, check the links section below.
Our dues are enough to cover publication cost of the bulletin - in this case $0.00. To join this club - all you need to do is subscribe to the e-mail reflector and make at least one posting making your presence known (preferably including your Visa number so we can collect your dues). To subscribe, send a message with the word SUBSCRIBE in the text to barc-request@kkn.net or barc-digest-request@kkn.net (the daily digest version). We would like to thank Trey Garlough, N5KO, for providing a place for the reflector to live.
All memberships are life memberships, so suicide is your only option for discontinuing your membership. Bulletins are sent over the internet and our bulletin editor is whoever posted the last message. These messages may be sent to barc@kkn.net. You should be warned that some of the postings to the club reflector are done with tongue in cheek. Occasionally someone will forget this and take someone elses' attempt at humour seriously. This is a mistake. Some of the postings could even be described as truly Boring. We do ask that members refrain from make rude postings as a dwindling percentage of the members are just here to help out with the kids contest. They tend to be more refined than the average contester/dxer..
At one time - we had club tee shirts. These are still available in a limited amont of sizes (mostly kid's sizes). If you are interested in one - you should contact k7rat@jzap.com to check on availability. You can also check them out at Dayon at booth 444 (TR Log).
The Boring ARC does have actual monthly bored meetings at the Crowne Plaza hotel at the intersection of I-5 and Highway 217 in Tigard, Oregon. This is about 10 minutes south of downtown Portland. Members are typically present from 11:45 AM until about 1:15 PM. They are held on the third Monday of each month. This meeting is a joint meeting with the Western Lake Oswego branch of the Willamette Valley DX Club - but the BARC was there first.
If you want to be a Charter Member - it is too late to sign up (but you can try anyway).
Thanks for visiting. I hope you weren't too bored. Comments to Bert - K7RAT.