Welcome to SWDCARC Country

Since the beginning when a small group of Hams met to form a club in the southwest corner of Dallas County, it has always been known as SWDCARC or by it's full name, Southwest Dallas County Amateur Radio Club. Tom Frohnapfel (K5EIS) wrote in an article in our club newsletter "The name of the ham club hasn't changed since we adopted it in 1975". Tom was one of the first members back then and remembers the beginning of SWDCARC. "By the second year, our membership was at 58 members" wrote Tom

Today, there are close to 60 members, not bad for a time where amateur radio competes with computers and the Internet as a high tech hobby. The Southwest Dallas County Amateur Radio Club has been very active in its communities. The club has assisted in numerous bicycle rallies over the years for the City of Duncanville and lately for the Cedar Hill Rotary Club’s Head for the Hills bike rally. All of the assistance was in the communications portion of the events, right up our alley. The club has also donated books for the libraries in Duncanville, DeSoto, Cedar Hill,  Lancaster and Grand Prairie to assist interested people in getting their amateur radio license. We also have donated time and money to other civic projects such as the Plant-a-bed at Armstrong Park in Duncanville.

Along with the community service, we also have found time for other projects such as participation in the National ARRL Field Day each June, achieving the top score for the 3A category in the West Gulf Division in 2006 (coming in 5^th overall in class 3A) as well as attending various Ham Conventions throughout the area. Our club has had numerous members participate in the Texas QSO party each year and enjoy contesting as a club. We have had transmitter hunts until everybody got too proficient in finding the "fox" and are always finding that amateur radio has a lot of things to choose from. This club also has a strong VEC program of which administers tests to those prospective hams as well as those already licensed in their upgrade efforts. We also have a weekly net on the two-meter repeater on Monday at 8:00 p.m. All licensed amateurs (members or not) are encouraged to participate.

Husbands and wives can be heard on our repeaters as well as at the membership meetings. It is not limited to the parents as we also enjoy the children involved with the club as well. Every aspect of Amateur radio can be found practiced by some member of SWDCARC such as ATV, CW, SSB, PSK31, packet, contesting, QRP, RTTY or satellite to name just a few.

We invite you to attend one of our general membership meetings to find out more about SWDCARC. Our general membership meetings are very little "business meetings" as that is mostly done at the Board Meetings. We always have an interesting program at our general membership meetings and encourage you to attend!

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SWDCARC

April Meeting Balloon Program