Local
HAM activities
HAM radio in
the area around Haarlem, the
capital city of the province of Noord Holland, is wide spread.
There are various groups of people that find common interest in the
many aspects of HAM radio.
Each 2nd and 4th Friday of
each month the "Project
Group .540" meets in
a small
building located on the grounds of Scouting The Buffalo's in Zandvoort.
".540" finds it's
origin
in the originally used "home frequency" of 144.540 MHz. The interesting
fact in this
respect is that,
when using frequencies on other bands (even in case of vacation
transmissions), a "5", "4" and "0"
are as much as possible incorporated in the used frequencies. So:
430.540, 29.540 and
50.540 MHz.
For the lower HF-band 'clever' use is made of the magic numbers, like
21.154, 14.154, etc.
This group consists of approximately 20 active persons.
There is a local division of the country wide VERON, in this respect
the "Afdeling
Kennemerland"
Kennemerland, in fact, is the area in a radius of approximately 10 to
15 miles around Haarlem, and it
does not include Amsterdam. The Kennemerland Department of the VERON
meets every second
Wednesday of each month.
The 'other' country wide HAM union is the VRZA, which has similar
subdepartments.
Members of VERON and VRZA can use the DQB, or Dutch QSL Bureau.
This bureau arranges the handling of QSL-cards.
Also active in this region is the NVRA,
meeting every Wednesday.
This group was founded in 1986 and has a wide range of activities.
They recently opened an extremely nice shack in the Waarderpolder.
The NVRA is not a countrywide organization.
At the mouth of the IJ (former small river of the Amsterdam area), at
the locks of
IJmuiden (in fact the North Sea Canal), there is another independant
radio club:
the YRC, the IJmond Radio
Club. They meet every 1st, 3rd and (when appropriate) 5th Friday
of each month. They have instituted an ATV repeater (PI6YRC).
Several of the above groups have expressed their intentions to work
together in the
Dutch version of Amateur Radio Emergency Service (DARES)
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