The Iowa City Amateur Radio Club (ICARC) has been in existence since at least 1933,
when it was first affiliated with the American Radio Relay League (ARRL),
the national association for Amateur Radio.
The club callsign, W0JV, belonged to a long-time club member,
George Carson,
who was a Physics Professor at the University of Iowa.
The club obtained it as a memorial callsign following his death.
The callsign is used on the clubs two-meter repeater on 146.25/146.85 MHz,
as well as for various club events,
such as the annual Field Day exercise and regular fox hunts.
Membership in the Iowa City Amateur Radio Club is open to all who have an interest in amateur radio.
An FCC license is not required for membership, but if you are not currently licensed, we will help you
pass the tests and become licensed if you so desire.
Also, membership in the ARRL is highly recommended, but is not required.
To join, please print and fill out the
Membership Application and mail it to the address on the form, along with a check for your dues.
(Note: If you have trouble printing the Membership Application form, an Adobe Acrobat PDF version is available
here.)
Payment of dues is required for membership.
The ICARC dues schedule follows (all amounts are per calendar year, prorated for part-year membership for new members only):
Individual
$20.00
Family
$30.00
Senior (age 75 and up)
$10.00
Senior Family (age 75 and up)
$15.00
Student
$10.00
Mail Dues to:
Iowa City Amateur Radio Club
P.O. Box 4
Iowa City, IA
52244-0004
Membership dues are the sole source of income for the Iowa City Amateur Radio Club, and support all
activities of the club, including the W0JV repeater (a very expensive undertaking), the Field Day potluck
dinner, programs and refreshments for the regular meetings, and other activities as authorized by vote of the
memberhsip.
If your name appears on the ICARC Membership Roster
and you are not receiving any e-mail traffic, this is an indication of an
invalid e-mail address in the roster or that your service provider is
blocking delivery. Contact me through
or at the monthly meeting to resolve this.
Pooh-bah: (the Lord-High everything else)
"I am, in point of fact,
a particularly haughty and exclusive person,
of pre-Adamite ancestral descent.
You will understand this when I tell you
that I can trace my ancestry back to a
protoplasmal primordial atomic globule."
"I am so Proud" from the comic opera "The Mikado"
music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert
ICARC normally meets at 7:00 PM on the second Wednesday of each month,
at The First United Methodist Church of North Liberty
Room 203
85 N. Jones Blvd
North Liberty
Meetings consist of a brief business meeting
followed by a program of interest to radio amateurs. Note: Before the meeting, you are invited to
join us for an informal meal and socializing at the J&A Tap in downtown North Liberty
across from Reds Alehouse.
J & A Tap
440 N Dubuque St
North Liberty, IA 52317
The email reflector has died an untimely death :-(
The hosting machine went down in mid 2018 and was replaced at the begining
of 2019.
Emails sent to the reflector address will be manually re-sent
to all members of the list. The reflector is open to club members,
although it is manually managed at this time...
All club members may currently post to the reflector email address (as it's
manually managed right now).
When the reflector is back up and running, your email return address must be the exact same
address that you registered under.
To post to the reflector, use this horrible
scriptlet, or copy the link and use a normal email client.
W0JV Repeater
ICARC sponsors the W0JV repeater which operates on an input/output frequency pair of 146.25 MHz /
146.85 MHz. The repeater is open to all, and is located on a tower on North Dodge Street south of Interstate 80.
In January 2007, K0GH and N0RXD installed a new controller unit and a new commercial
repeater running approximately 45 watts. The previous repeater is being kept as a back up.
The repeater requires a 192.8 Hz CTCSS tone for access. This means that when you transmit on the repeater's input
frequency, your transceiver adds a very precise audio tone (192.8 Hz) at a very low level superimosed on the transmitter
output along with the microphone audio. The repeater must sense that tone on the received signal to open the squelch. A circuit
called a Carrier Operated Switch senses the squelch opening, which tells the repeater that there is a carrier on the input.
The controller keys the transmitter, thereby repeating the signal from the input frequency. (The tone frequency used on
the W0JV repeater (192.8 Hz) follows the recommendation of the Iowa Repeater Council for our area.)
The Repeater: Top: Kenwood repeater.
Bottom: The Duplexer (gold cylinders) -
This unit makes it possible to transmit and receive
at the same time on a single antenna!
The Antenna: The tower is 300' tall.
The W0JV antenna is at 150' and is marked with an arrow.
Although the ICARC does not officially sponsor the Johnson County Sunday Evening Net, this information is provided here
as a courtesy to the net.
The Johnson County Sunday Evening Net is primarily a "social" net, which meets at 7:30 PM every Sunday evening on the
W0JV repeater on 146.85 MHz, which requires a 192.8 Hz PL tone. Although this is an informal net, proper directed net
procedures are followed.
In case of malfunction of the Iowa City repeater, the first alternate net frequency is the
Coralville repeater on 147.15 MHz, which also requires a 192.8 Hz PL tone. In case neither repeater is functional,
the net will meet on the national simplex frequency, 146.52 Mhz.
Net control responsibilities may be rotated monthly through volunteers from area amateur radio operators. If you
would like to volunteer, please do so at a regular monthly meeting of the ICARC, or contact Jeff, KI0JP.
Information exchanged includes ham radio related news, such as meeting notices or other club activities, VE session
announcements, hamfest announcements and equipment for sale. Please check in whenever you can.
(For Net Control Stations: A suggested net control script and roll call is available here.
You can download this same information in PDF format by right-clicking
this link
and choosing "Save Target as...". The roll call sheet lists callsign, name and QTH for those who frequently check in,
and has additional columns to record check-ins and traffic, if any.
Severe Weather (Skywarn®) Net
®
Although the Iowa City Amateur Radio Club does not officially sponsor the Johnson County Skywarn®
Net, this information is provided here as a public service to those who wish to participate.
The Skywarn® Net is an ad hoc net which may be activated by request of the Johnson County Emergency Management
Agency, the National Weather Service or any amateur radio operator when severe weather is identified
in any part of Johnson County by the National Weather Service. Weather sirens sounding are a valid trigger for opening
the net. The net meets on the W0JV repeater on 146.85 MHz, which
requires a 192.8 Hz tone. Trained weather spotters from various areas of the county may observe weather conditions and
report their observations to net control.
Please see the Skywarn® Net Operations page for more information.
Skywarn® and the Skywarn® logo are registered trademarks of the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration, used with permission.
Field Day
Field Day is the "big event" for the ICARC. It provides us a great opportunity to have a lot
of fun, while improving our skills in setting up emergency stations, and operating under
conditions that can be difficult, at best. Field Day is always the fourth full weekend of June, beginning
at 1800 UTC (1:00 PM CDT) Saturday and ending at 2100 UTC (4:00 PM CDT) Sunday. Field Day 2018 will be
held June 23 and 24. We usually incorporate a Saturday evening potluck dinner for families and friends.
Since we usually set up in a local public park, it also provides us an opportunity to show off amateur
radio to the public. We usually get publicity for this event in the local newspaper, and local TV stations
have featured us on their weekend news broadcast. The ICARC Field Day page
provides all the details, including links to the complete ARRL Field Day rules and many other resources.
There are a few photographs of the 2006 operation available on the Field Day
Photo Album page.
Public Service
Members of the ICARC may on their own initiative provide public-service communications for community activities, including
the annual Run For the Schools and the Solon Beef Days. Communications services are usually conducted on the W0JV
repeater by participating local amateur radio operators using either handi-talkies or mobile radios.
The Iowa City Amateur Radio Club is neither officially involved nor responsible for any such operations.
