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About Us

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The Muscatine Amateur Radio Club began in 1948 and currently has approximately 25 paid members.


We meet the second Monday evening of each month at 7:00 pm at the Pizza Ranch in Muscatine. It is an open meeting, and all are invited to attend.

OUR MEETINGS are held at:
  Muscatine Pizza Ranch

    106 Ford Avenue                        Everyone is welcome to attend!
 
  Muscatine, IA 52761

OUR REPEATER

  The MARC owns the KCØAQS/R  146.310/.910 repeater located on the  Muscatine Community College campus.

 

 The repeater is an open access machine  for the use by all licensed amateurs. The  repeater requires 192.8 Hz CTCSS tone for access.
 

  We have a weekly On-Air service net every Sunday at 8:30 pm local time. Please check in and meet the local hams.

  We also host the Muscatine County ARES Weekly Net every Sunday at 9:00 pm local time. It is also an open net, and all licensed amateurs are invited to check in.

  The repeater can also be accessed via the KCØAQS-R Echolink node.

The first meeting of the Muscatine Amateur Radio Club was held on January 21 1948. That makes this year the 75th Anniversary of the club. That is a great accomplishment, especially in this day and age.

Unfortunately, like a lot of other hobbies, amateur radio operators are getting harder to come by. The digital age has many people scratching their heads and saying, "What in the world do I need a radio for? I have a cell phone!". While technology is a great thing... it is also very fragile. New technology makes our lives easier... until it doesn't. When we depend on the latest and greatest technology and it fails for us... we will be lost.

 

That is exactly why we need amateur radio. We need a system in place that can provide communications when all other means fail. A backup if you will. A way to carry us back to a time when those fragile systems are back up and running, and can handle the loads we put on them. There are many reasons our current systems can (and will) fail. Most of the time in the aftermath of a large wide-spread disaster the current platform can not handle the extreme load put on it, as it is not designed to handle that kind of a load.

 

Look for a week-long Special Event station coming up in late September or early October in celebration of the 75th anniversary of MARC. This will run in conjunction with our 40th Annual Southeast Iowa Hamfest that will take place Sunday, October 1, 2023 at the Louisa County Fairgrounds in Columbus Junction, Iowa.

 

The Muscatine Amateur Radio Club supports our ARES team. The Muscatine County Amateur Radio Emergency Service team works hard to get members involved in exercises that will not only keep the membership interested, but also encourages them to learn. They also do on-the-air license study sessions to help individuals get their license, they even hold bi-monthly testing sessions to coordinated by Volunteer Examiners to obtain your amateur radio license.

 

MARC apparel is available to show your support. T-shirts, Hoodies, Caps, and Stocking caps are available, as well as many other items you can special order. Contact Bruce - WBØGAG at 319-212-1898, or email him at BDagel@Machlink.com if you are interested.

MEMBERSHIP

  Club membership dues are only $15.00 per year.

INTRODUCTION TO AMATEUR RADIO - PowerPoint - Click to Download

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