SCARS Selected as 2020 Hamvention Club of the Year

The Hamvention Awards event has been held since 1955. Over these years many amateurs have been honored for their dedication and selfless contributions to our avocation and to mankind. The Club of the Year is honored for clearly demonstrating their involvement in varied aspects of Amateur Radio for the greater good of their community and/or their nation. These awards are considered the “Academy Awards” of Amateur Radio.

South Canadian Amateur Radio Society – SCARS was selected as the 2020 Hamvention Club of the Year and this was announced by the Hamvention Awards Committee on the DXEngineering Facebook Live event on March 3rd.

SCARS would like to thank the hundreds of members that have made this award possible. And, thanks to the Hamvention awards committee for allowing us to be a part of this process. Part of the nomination process includes creating a one-page summary of our club, and the activities we participate in. The initial list filled three pages, but it took a while to whittle it down to this information. We also provided a few photographs that capture some of the activities here at SCARS. The following is the summary that was provided. Congrats to all of us!!!

SCARS – Norman, Oklahoma – W5NOR – Our Club

Was formed in the fall of 1977 to provide emergency communications for the new Norman American Red Cross building.
A 501c(3) organization that has been an ARRL Special Service Club since 1990, currently with over 160 active members.
Our members provide over 1,000 volunteer hours per month of training, learning, or serving the local community.

Activities

Provide leadership and workers for the annual Oklahoma City hamfest, Ham Holiday. https://HamHoliday.com
Summer and Winter Field Day with 2 stations, and a GOTA station. Typically, 100 attendees operate the entire 24 hours.
Help to coordinate the quarterly Oklahoma City All-Ham Dinner. About 75 hams meet for dinner in January, May, and September from the adjacent 6 Oklahoma City amateur radio clubs. https://HamHoliday.com/allhamdinner
Monthly meetings with about 70 members that include an hour-long technical presentation.
Daily, except Sunday, McMeetings at McDonald’s with about 15 hams in attendance. https://w5nor.org/meetings
Provide new club members with a VHF / UHF FM or DMR radio to help them start their radio journey.
Spring and Fall picnics at a member’s QTH. Eat hamburgers/hot links, talk radio, and operate radios.
SCARS technical committee manages about a dozen VHF, UHF, FM, D-Star, DMR, AREDN, and APRS repeaters.
Our active YL community activated the USS Batfish submarine in Muskogee, OK. They honored the USS Wahoo and the USS Dorado by making more than 350 contacts during the 3-day special event station event. https://w5nor.org/batfish
Created thirty $10 Pixie CW transmitter kits to teach kit building and encourage CW operation. https://w5nor.org/pixie
Assembled seventy $10 tape measure VHF Yagi kits. Used for DF exercises and handheld radios. https://w5nor.org/tape

Public Service

Provide communications workers for the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon. https://w5nor.org/marathon
Provide leadership and workers for the two-day Oklahoma BikeMS fundraiser ride. https://w5nor.org/w5nor.org/bikems
Manages Cleveland County ARES. Operates four weekly nets with 100+ hams attending. https://w5nor.org/ares
Members work with city, county, state, national, and international groups to provide aid during storms, fires, tornadoes, and hurricanes. Members have served in on the southern coasts, and in Puerto Rico for the hurricanes of 2018.
Members present, and attend, annual National Weather Service Skywarn seminars. https://w5nor.org/skywarn
Operates storm nets during severe weather conditions in Norman, Moore, Newcastle and Cleveland/McClain county.
The Emergency Managers of Norman, Moore, Newcastle, and Cleveland County are active SCARS members.
SCARS supported, and our members managed, the quad-annual International YLRL convention in Oklahoma City.
Weekly Emergency Siren Test net to verify the operation of the Norman and Moore sirens. https://w5nor.org/siren

Club Communication

Active Facebook community with about 400 members. https://w5nor.org/facebook
Weekly newsletter distributed to over 250 hams. https://w5nor.org/newsletter
Collected, scanned, and display 28 years of Oklahoma City monthly newsletters on the web. https://w5nor.org/ce
Designed, built and staff the emergency communications radios for the Norman Red Cross. https://w5nor.org/redcross
Designed, built, and manages a display radios at the National Weather Museum. https://nationalweathermuseum.com
Designed, built, and operate the amateur radio station at the National Weather Center. http://www.ou.edu/nwc
Members designed, built, and operate a HF/VHF/UHF station at Norman Firehouse #7, the emergency operations center for Norman, the Moore Emergency Operations Center in Moore, and the Newcastle Emergency Operations Center.
YouTube channel with monthly presentation videos. Over 34,000 minutes of viewing. https://w5nor.org/youtube

Member Education

Weekly Elmer Nights at the Red Cross with about 24 attending. Elmers guide new and potential hams through Morse Code, hands-on build projects, 1 on 1 problem solving, and on-the-air training. https://w5nor.org/elmernights
Online Morse Code Training that 15,000 hams from 110+ countries have used at https://w5nor.org/morse
Annual Technician / General classes. This year, three classes were offered in the area. https://w5nor.org/class
Monthly VE Laurel VE sessions. Over 130 element tests, 96 passed, 52 new hams in 2018. https://w5nor.org/license