After a hiatus that was a little longer than we intended, we are finally back to bringing news on the activities that we perform at ARK.

NTNU, the university which most of our members attend, started classes for senior students again this week. Therefore, most of our members are slowly trickling back into town, and ready to embark on new radio adventures.

All has not been smooth, however. With a large student body returning to Trondheim, our access to Studentersamfundet has been restricted in order to prevent a second wave of covid-19 infections. As the student body stabilizes, our access restrictions ease off and operations return to near normal. A moment of catharsis washed over us this week as we were able to hold the first physical monday meetng in almost half a year!

LB4FI making the traditional monday meeting waffles. Photo: LB5NI

A topic that brings us some concern is the revenue loss we are facing due to covid-19 restrictions. To fill our coffers our members perform ID-checks at the various bars at Studentersamfundet. Unfortunately, there is not much of this work at the moment as professionals have had to be hired in order to meet infection control demands. One of our main pursuits at the moment is looking into the reimbursment deals which have been put forward by our government, local student council, and other bodies. If we are able to secure some of this funding, it will be a lot easier for us to continue activities undisturbed.

On another front we are looking into recruiting new members, and planning how we may be able to offer the best (possibly remote friendly) club activities to our members throughout the fall. One such topic is the license course, which we plan to hold towards the end of September/start of October. More info on this in a separate post as we nail down the nitty gritty.

A depiction of the traditional ARK refurbishment mentality, sweep the dirt into the workshop and conveniently forget about it.

Finally, and as will probably be explored in future blogposts, we have accrued a long list of things that need to be repaired. Some of the topics include: repairing our (still) broken HF rotor, repairing our dish rotor, improvng the ground plane of our Big-IR, redeploying our 160 m antenna, and getting TX-ready on the 4 m band, and many many more. Here’s to an exciting semester!