SARA Home Page ~ last update:  04 Jan 2023

Shiawassee Amateur Radio Association

Welcome to our web site! Our [SARA] is a non-profit amateur radio organization in lower central Michigan (Shiawassee County) and dedicated to public service, emergency communications, and the advancement of amateur radio through education and technical excellence. Our club call sign is W8QQQ - listen for "Quack-Quack-Quack" on the air and give us a call ! Club members are allowed to operate the station on a scheduled basis.

Check out the 'club details' on "SARA Club History". 

SARA invites anyone with an interest in amateur radio or public service to come to a meeting and/or join our club. Due to COVID the meetings from early 2020 until November, 2022 were all 'Zoom Meetings' only {see footer of page}. Meetings are held the second Tuesday of the month at 7:00 PM. Check our meeting schedule link as we do not always meet but do keep our schedule 'up-to-date'. Dues are $15.00 a year prorated at 1/2 year intervals. You can find our membership application here. For any new licensee - we give a period of 'reduced club dues' - so it is "low cost", check us out and join our local group. You can join us at any of our monthly meetings or at other time by contacting Dennis Phillips, KC8ETW, Treasurer at KC8ETW (email) or email us at W8QQQ <at> arrl.net. [Hint: most SARA members can be reached with email by using their "call letters"@yahoo.com.]

Shiawassee Amateur Radio Association Members ~ The "SARA Announces" link on the main menu will have items that you may wish to check frequently. We post items that are new and changing in this area, local hams use it to stay current!

ANY & ALL SHIAWASSEE County Hams ~ This is for ALL Shiawassee County Hams (not just club members). Please review and report your status for the SARA's ARPSC [ARES/RACES] Local Inventory Form.  We keep a log of capabilities and contact information for Emergency Management in Shiawassee County. In general, if you are not  'preapproved' for EmComms [ARES and Skywarn] you may not be able to assist in an emergency, so it is very important to preregister which is free. You can <email> data to:   W8QQQ <at> arrl.net or to Shiawassee County Emergency Coordinator [EC] who is Phil Bates, AC8FW. He works with our Homeland Security contacts. Let Phil know if you would be willing to assist with county EMMCOMs / Skywarn. We have about 200 hams in the county, but only about 20 in the SARA club ~ and not all want to work EMMCOMS! (Probably 8~10 are all that are truly active!) WE NEED HELP from ALL HAMS for our county! The ARES group meets every other month before regular SARA meetings, come to a meeting and check out our EMCOMM group. Equipment and other emergency capabilities for use in an emergency need to cataloged and logged to allow quick deployments when required by Homeland Security.

SARA's Social Grouping ~ Google

We have a Google Group that is open for all to join. SARA's Google Group is called "W8QQQ" and we invite anyone interested to join us. It is free to join. Click on the link to get started. If you join you will get notifications on some important 'local' ham information whenever it is published (meeting notifications, events, etc.) and emails on current topics for all Shiawassee area Hams.

                                             ... and so a GREAT BIG 73! de W8QQQ  

We hope to see you at a club meeting soon! It is really easy via Zoom Meeting, Check out the top menu "SARA Club Items" - "Meetings" page for current status and access.

W8QQQ Website moved to 'Google Sites in 2022'

SARA's website was being hosted by  "Day Star Communications, who decided in late 2021 (Oct) to stop doing such hosting on their servers, so SARA chose to move our site to 'Google Sites'.  We wish to thank Daystar for all their years of support, they are a great company. The previous site was written directly in "raw html code" and provided lots of flexibility and detailed control in our site design at a cost of site complexity and management {somewhat complex and time consuming}. The software updating was a large task, which we managed. The move to Google Sites require a change into a simpler page structure and we lost some of our past features, but we will work on keeping as many as practical with our time efforts. We ask for your patience as we go through the updating and rebuilding process. Remember this is free labor for our hobby and can take away from the communication aspects at our root interest.

Website menu operation...

The website menu on the top of each page works by "clicking the down arrows" in front of a menu topic. You can not move through the site unless you click on those arrows! They are 'layered' and can go several levels deep ~ it is 'Google Sites' thing. Take you time and/or search our site to assist you (the little spyglass in upper right corner).