The Brainerd Area Amateur Radio Club
started in 1965 as a group of hams getting together to share
ideas. It
was called the Paul Bunyan Amateur Radio Club (PBARC).
The club was fostered Ed Marquart WØCKT, who was a college
physics instructor and advisor.
The Club call at that time was KØYGJ.
Prominent names in the organization include:
M.
“Fritz” Bertelt KØMAH, now WØKO, who has been a club
member since the beginning when he was
a high school and then a college student in Brainerd.
Fritz served many years as the club newsletter editor and
is the current Club Repeater Trustee.
Roger Syvertsen KØVOO was very
successful in turning out new hams especially young people at the
Brainerd High School when the school station had the call WBØAYS.
They included Paul Hunt WBØDAA, who went on to found Hunt
Technologies, a multi-million Dollar company.
It sells Turtle power metering devices world-wide to power
companies.
In
the 1970’s we got our first repeater, WRØAOW.
Yes, repeaters had their own call signs back then.
Others, such as Tom Schwankl WBØCZZ, and Dave Miller WBØKKG,
were also instrumental in getting the Club energized.
George
Melin WØKRG, later WØIN, is now a silent key.
George was involved in radio and amateur
radio his entire life. He
was a radioman in the U. S. Navy during WWII.
George came back to civilian life to run a television
repair shop and then a Motorola two-way repair business in
Brainerd.
Joe O’Toole WØBUC was also a
WWII veteran and loved his military surplus BC-610 Transmitter.
He was President of the club in the early 1970’s and
became a silent key in the 1980’s.
Elmer “Doc” Seale KØQIH is a
Past President of the club. “Doc”
is a retired dentist who always found time to ham while he was
working. The story
goes that he would talk about ham radio while patients could not
talk back in his dentist chair.
He even built an HF transceiver from scratch…not a kit.
Mark Gray WAØPPY, a local
physician, was active in the club in the 1980’s.
Ken
Magloughlin KAØJSW was very active in the club and helped
rewrite the club constitution in 1990.
He helped rewrite it again in 2001.
Ken was in charge of community service events until his
death in 2003.
BAARC was one of the first ham
clubs to have a website. The
year was early in 1997 when John Kotula KCØANR took a class to
learn web writing. See
how it has progressed by going to the site at:
brainerdham.org.
The Brainerd Area Amateur Radio
Club is an organization of about 100 members of which 25 to 30
show up at every membership meeting.
Not bad for a community of 13,000 in a trade-area of 70,000
people.
Annual community events, aided by
the BAARC are: The
Gull Lake Fishing Tournament, Mid-Minnesota Sled Dog Race, Paul
Bunyan Bicycle Tour of the Lakes, and Halloween Goblin Watch.
Fun club activities include two
Saturday morning breakfasts, a Winter Banquet, a Spring Banquet,
Field Day, a Fox Hunt, and a Summer Picnic.
Brainerd is in the heart of
vacationland in Central, Minnesota. We are 120 miles north of Minneapolis/St. Paul, 120 miles
west of Duluth, MN, and 150 miles east of Fargo, ND.
We currently own and maintain one
6-meter FM repeater, three 2-meter FM repeaters, one 70-centimeter
FM repeater, one 2-meter Echo-Link node, one 2-meter packet node,
a 2-meter DX cluster, and a portable 2-meter repeater for
community events and disaster readiness.
BAARC has an e-mail cluster for
club members.
