Valencia County Amateur Radio Association

Do you want to talk to the people on the space station? Yes, that space station.

If that’s something you find interesting, you should check out the Valencia County Amateur Radio Association.

“You have to have some sort of interest in amateur radio or electronics, do-it-yourself, things like that,” said VCARA club president John Schaaf. “Most of us have ham radio stations at home, varying from just a walkie-talkie all the way up to full-blown radio stations.”

If you haven’t made the commitment and gone full ham, Schaaf said members of the public interested in amateur radio operations are more than welcome to attend the clubs regular Saturday morning meetings from 9 a.m. to noon.

“We have breakfast burritos and just kind of BS,” he said.

The VCARA clubhouse found a permanent home a few years ago at the Christ the King Lutheran Church, 700 Camelot Blvd. SW in Los Lunas in the building on the southwest corner of the church parking lot.

On the first and third Saturday, the club holds a builders group where they work on DIY projects. The second Saturday is when they host amateur radio license testing and the fourth Saturday is dedicated to ARES — Amateur Radio Emergency Service — meetings.

Thanks to a fixed base of operations, hosting the annual ham radio Field Day has become a lot easier, Schaaf said.

Field Day is ham radio’s open house which is held on the last full weekend of June and has been going since 1933. More than 31,000 hams throughout North America set up temporary transmitting stations in public places to demonstrate ham radio’s science, skill and service to their communities and the nation.

VCARA hosted the local Field Day at its clubhouse from 12 p.m., Saturday, June 28, to 12 p.m., Sunday, June 29.

In the past, the club set up for Field Day at locations such as the Bosque Farms Community Center, which meant getting to the venue hours in advance to set up, hosting the 24-hour event and then packing it all up to leave.

While ham radio operation can be viewed as mostly a hobby, Schaaf said VCARA and other clubs like it serve a very real purpose in communities as an alternate emergency operations communication center.

“Let’s say the emergency community center for Valencia County got hit by lightening and trashed all their equipment,” Schaaf said. “They could come here or we could provide additional equipment.”

He emphasized the club is only used for emergency communications if they are asked to.

“We have to be asked to activate and assist,” he said. “A couple years ago, in Ruidoso they had all the fires and floods, a lot of their backup communication systems were activated. Radio was the only communications in and out of Ruidoso for quite a while. Emergency services in an area only works with a subset of ham radio people who are ARES certified.

“There is a lot of additional testing and training for that certification. If you are an ARES member, you can be activated, so to speak, and either go out and deploy to help them or sit here and run the radios during an emergency they have asked for our help on. A ham can’t just go out and say, ‘Hey, I’m a ham, and I’m here to help you with communications.”

Schaaf said ARES certified operators have to be familiar with the organizational structure of emergency services from the federal level down to the local.

“You have to be able to communicate and navigate successfully. We don’t just go help. You can’t just go insert yourself into that,” he said.

Whether operators are asked to help with emergency communications or not, they do have to be FCC certified at one of three levels — technical, general and extra. As one would expect, as an operator advances levels, the tests become harder and more technical.

“The great thing is there are free study guides online and the entire question pool for all the tests are published,” Schaaf said. “You could actually memorize the entire question pool and come get your ham radio license, but we’d prefer you learn something.”

Schaaf said club members are always happy to mentor and help up and coming operators study for their licensing exams.

The club actually has volunteer examiners — similar to test proctors — who give the exams at the clubhouse in Los Lunas.

“It used to be on paper and before that you had to go to an FCC field office to take the exam,” he said. “With the VEs, we are here to make sure no one cheats. They use our equipment to take the test. It’s much easier to get your ham radio license.”

One goal VCARA has is to attract new, younger members to the club and ham radio as a whole. A $10,000 Meta Community Action Grant awarded to Valencia Middle School in 2023 is helping with that endeavor.

Initially, the funding was used to sponsor and after-school amateur radio club at VMS and, this year, students will be able to earn class credits by studying ham radio and robots.

Manuel Guadalupe Monsibais, now 15, was the first VMS student to earn his license at age 14.

Being involved in amateur radio definitely appeals to the nerd in Schaaf.

“Every since I was a little kid, I’ve loved electronics. When I started learning about computers, I fell in love with them,” he said. “Amateur radio and computers integrate together so nicely. You can build your own radios, your own antennas. If you don’t like to talk on the radio, there are digital modes where you can just type messages. I mean, Morse code was the original text system.”

Exploring the world by ham radio is something that’s a lot of fun, Schaaf says.

“We get together and eat and talk. You get on the radio and talk to perfect strangers all around the radio,” Schaaf said. “Anyone is welcome to come by for a meeting. We’d be happy to show them the equipment and explain how it works.”

Annual dues for the club are $40 for a family membership, $30 for an individual and $20 for an associate membership.