This is a brief update on TEARA - The Triangle East ARA in eastern NC. This club was active for many years, but slowly fell inactive. There are several active clubs in the area to fill the needs of amateurs. TEARA was primarily a tech and contest club. In TEARA, we used to work many of the active contests on HF, VHF, and UHF. We also did mountain topping and special events. Myself and KT4BN wrote a program called DXTalker to pull dx cluster spots from the network and using voice synthesis, it was automatically rebroadcast over our UHF repeaters. We had a huge club project in the early 90's to convert 2 pallets of old retired Motorola Micors to the amateur band, instantly populating our otherwise dead 440 repeater with users. We routinely had antenna parties, fox hunting, repeater site work, etc. LOTS of FUN!
Underway at this time are efforts to update the old legacy website, get the repeaters back up to speed, and start contesting again. There are no plans to bring this back to the 125+ members it once was, but instead to rebuild this small niche of the clubbing hobby.
https://www.wb4iuy.net/teara/External link — you are leaving FOTA
Testing edit on this new platform... To add the "why" a club can fall dormant... In addition to everything else going on, we started hosting Ham Radio classes at the Tech in Smithfield NC, 2 or more a year. We also taught in Wilson and Wendell NC. A few of us were transmitting CW practice classes over the repeater network, and many people got their CW elements and passed them as a result. We also started a VE Team in 1992, and were holding sessions monthly with 100+ applicants. It was a big bang, but also a LOT of work. In the late 90's my wife and I were traveling for our jobs, a lot. Additionally, I was involved in starting another company. I had to pull back to focus on work more. Others passed away, many moved away, and those that were left were involved in other clubs and/or had their own life issues to deal with.
It happens. We had so many great memories. I'm not looking to do all of that again, unless there are others who want to jump in. My primary focus is the repeater network and links, contesting, and building.
