In this issue: Special News, Membership reminders, Volunteer Updates, Club Happenings, and a few final thoughts.
SPECIAL NEWS: Morse Code Operator to be honoured
In time for Remembrance Day, the City of Ottawa has announced it will name a street for Elsa Lessard, a Morse Code operator who served with the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service (WRCNS or “Wrens”) during the Second World War. Lessard spent long hours listening through static and carefully recording coded transmissions from German U-boats during the Battle of the Atlantic. She worked from two secret stations, one south of Ottawa and another that was hidden on a farm in New Brunswick. The street sign will be installed by November 2027 in Wateridge Village, the former CFB Rockcliffe base. Here is a link to the CTV News story, which includes video and photos: Local veteran honoured in street naming ceremony
MEMBERSHIP REMINDERS
Membership Renewal
Many of you may be accustomed to a September-October membership renewal but, last year, when we switched to Zeffy (our online payment system), many renewal dates were moved to January-February. Please wait for our membership-renewal reminder email, which you will receive 30 days before your membership expires. In the meantime, if you want to know your expiry date, please Contact Us and we’ll check our records.
Some Auto-Renewals inadvertently stopped
If you set up automatic renewal last year, thank you so very much. We encourage all members to set up automatic renewal because it saves us a lot of time. With auto-renewal, your membership is always up to date without any effort from us. Please note that we did have a technical problem and some auto renewals were inadvertently stopped …so you may have to set it up again this year. We hope you will! And we are certain that everything will go smoothly in the future.
VOLUNTEER UPDATES
We now have a small volunteer team helping to run the OARC Monthly Meeting. I’m deeply grateful to them because it takes many hands to set up the room, welcome and register attendees, set up and run the audio-visual equipment, manage the Teams call, make the coffee and bring the snacks. Phew!
Please see the Volunteer page for the other roles (short-term and longer-term) that still need to be filled for the Club to deliver on its 2025-26 Operational Plan.
CLUB HAPPENINGS
EDUCATION
Three fall 2025 OARC Educational offerings are now underway: the Basic Amateur Radio Course, the Morse Code (CW) course, and the Soldering Skills and Kit Building workshop. The Basic Course had record-breaking registration! We squeezed in 10 extra seats and still had to establish a waiting list. Those on the waiting list will be offered a chance to register for the spring Basic Course before registration opens to everyone else.
EQUIPMENT
We have purchased and are installing a new repeater system at Camp Fortune. It is an ICOM IC-RP4010V UHF Analog/DSTAR repeater, and it will be connected to the internet. This is good news for anyone with an ICOM VHF/UHF radio that has DSTAR Digital capability. For anyone who has been using the DMR repeater on this frequency, we apologize. We are looking at our options for keeping this repeater running too. But it may have to be offline in the short term. We had to complete the implementation of the DSTAR repeater quickly and this was the most expedient approach. We are also still considering our options for the replacement of our VHF FM repeater on 146.940. More on that soon. Harrie will provide an update on the project at the OARC Monthly Meeting on Nov. 12.
ACTIVITIES
Club Activities
We’re looking forward to the November OARC Monthly Meeting (Nov. 12), especially now that we have successfully introduced some new A-V equipment and made the switch to MS Teams. I’m especially looking forward to the presentation by Andrea VA3EBE, who will talk to us about how her home, while within the city, is completely off the grid and how she manages to live without sacrificing power, reliability, or peace of mind. She will describe her system, including solar panels, high-performance lithium batteries, charge controllers, inverters, mounting hardware, and all the essential wiring. Harrie VE3HYS will also provide an update on the repeater-upgrade project.
Our December Monthly Meeting will be replaced by the OARC Holiday Party (Dec. 10) with a buffet dinner, good conversations, and of course there will be prizes! The party will be in a private room at KS on the Keys Restaurant, 1029 Daze St., Ottawa in South Keys near the corner of Bank and Hunt Club. Please register soon so we know how many people to plan for. The cost is just $30. Click here to register and pay: https://oarc.net/activity/oarc-2025-holiday-party/
Community Events
The Canadian Ski Marathon (CSM)will be celebrating its 60th anniversary this coming February 6, 7 and 8th. This is the next Community Event at which we get involved in providing volunteer radio-communications and other support. Amateur Radio operators are needed to pass traffic relating to checkpoint supply levels, expected numbers of skiers, skier transport, skier extractions, start and end times for the checkpoints. Some of our members have been volunteering at this event for more than 40 years. WOW! There is also a 2nd opportunity to be part of the chip-and-loop team. We install an antenna loop under the snow at every entry and exit point of every checkpoint. Skiers wear a transponder which is energized as they ski over the loop, and location and timestamp are updated from a controller attached to the loop. The transponder is beaconing skier ID along with timestamp and location to the cloud via a cellphone that they ski past further down the trail. This allows the organizer, family, and friends of skiers to always know within a few kilometers, where everyone is to keep everyone safe. Volunteers stay in accommodations nearby, and most meals are included. To learn more and register, click here: CSM 2026 in the OARC calendar (the registration link is not active yet – but soon!)
PARTNERSHIPS
Our West-Carleton Disaster Relief (WCDR) partners, together with our new Aux-Comm core team, are conducting live field exercises in West Carleton every two months, starting in December. These exercises will allow WCDR to develop and refine plans and will also allow WCDR and Amateur-Radio operators in the region to get to know each other better, learn how to work together as a team, and how best to use available equipment.
Our Scouts partners held another successful Jamboree on the Air (JOTA) – Jamboree on the Internet (JOTI) 2025 on October 18-19 at Scouts Headquarters. This popular Radio Scouting event saw another jump in attendance this year with 84 participants, including two Scouts troops, one Cub pack, and many drop-ins. Attendees enjoyed numerous Amateur-Radio activities and displays. Click here to read the JOTA-JOTI 2025 report on the OARC website.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I’ve now been in my role as OARC President for one year. I think we have achieved a lot so far. We have more than doubled our membership, started modernizing our equipment and our Club operations, improved our communications, attracted many new volunteers, and established our first Operational Plan. There is always more to do, of course, but these accomplishments are all steps in the right direction, supporting the Club’s vision of building and maintaining a thriving Ottawa Amateur Radio community of individuals that are trained, equipped, and actively involved in the hobby and in providing radio-communications support as a public service to our served agencies.
I look forward to seeing many of you at the OARC Monthly Meeting on Wednesday, November 12th and again at the OARC Holiday Party Dec. 10th. Please don’t forget to register so we know you are coming.
All my best and 73,
Roger Egan, VA3EGY
The Prez
Last Updated on 2025-11-08 by Eve