The history of the Shuswap Amateur Radio Club from its founding in 1976/77 through to 2014 is available for viewing or download. The history was compiled by Ron, VE7RLE as a spreadsheet and exported to a PDF document, allowing it to be searched in Adobe Acrobat using the FIND (Control-F) function. The file can be accessed at this link: SARC History
As luck would have it, I met Werner VE7GWE today in the library.
It will likely be the last time he graces us with his presence for several more years.
OWEN GARRIOT W5LFL, SPACE-SHUTTLE COLUMBIA. “The whole family went outside on December 1, 1983 at approximately 6:30 local time to look in to the clear night sky to see if we could spot the Space-Shuttle Columbia. Being an amateur radio operator or (commonly known as a Ham) I took my 2 meter FM handheld transceiver with me. And to my surprise, heard somebody calling, “This is W5LFL in the Space-Shuttle Columbia calling the West Coast of North America.” My wife standing a little further away said, “who’s that ham driving around Salmon Arm?” Now this resulted in some head-shaking and lecturing by the ham operator standing next to her.
Our records indicate that instructor Al Marr VE7CAL paid Eagle River School in Sicamous $5 to cover stencils and reproduction paper to reproduce materials related to the Basic Qualification Course held in that school.
The Shuswap Amateur Radio Club application of March 9, 1978 for a license to establish and operate an Amateur Radio Experimental station has received favourable consideration. “Authority is hereby granted for the operation of your Amateur Station Repeater in accordance with the regulations and schedule of frequencies determined by your Amateur certificate. The call sign VE7RNH is to be used to identify your station. 146.760 MHz Transmit and 146.160 MHz Receive. A formal license will follow.” issued by the Department of Communications, Kelowna.
For what appears to be the first Field Day of the club and likely the most creative, the Field Day was held at Anstey Arm Provincial Park.
There is no doubt that there were many hams in the Okanagan Shuswap area long before the club was formed in 1977, and it is very likely that many hams gathered together in small informal groups to work Field Day which began with the American Radio Relay League in 1933.
Somewhere around 1976, Tosh Miyagawa moved to Salmon Arm from Milk River, SK. He became acquainted with Ken Hoshowksi. Tosh suggested that some of the local hams should get together to share the hobby. Ken and Tosh came up with the idea of forming a club.