A Brief History and Information about our Club:

AB4WV – The Amateur Radio Club of Westminster Village (ARCWV)

ARCWV was founded in 2023 with two significant purposes:

  1. Provide emergency communications for Administration of Westminster Village with the County EMA and FEMA, during and after a disaster when loss of power, internet and phone service is likely.

  2. Provide residents of Westminster Village the ability to send email messages to family members as AB4WV can transmit emails over the radio to gateway stations outside the disaster area that automatically reconnect the message into the internet.



ARCWV Accomplishments:

  1. Forging Relationships with County Emergency Services: ARCWV members are registered with the Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) of Baldwin County and participate in weekly emergency training nets for the amateur radio clubs of both the Baldwin and Mobile Counties. ARCWV conducts a weekly simplex net for the area. ARCWV installed and maintains a Winlink Gateway that provides EMA and ARES emergency communications.

  2. Training & Testing for New Hams: ARCWV offers Ham Courses to prepare residents, employees and their family members an opportunity to obtain licensure as an amateur radio operator.

  3. Mentoring New Hams: Learning to operate a hand-held radio and checking into weekly emergency nets is the first learning curve. ARCWV installed a cross-band repeater so our radio operators can contact the county EMA repeater from anywhere on our campus, allowing county wide transmissionss with only a 5-watt hand-held radio. Once they are proficient, we begin learning the more sophisticated equipment in our radio room. We provide one on one instruction for each of the 3 stations: HF, CW/Digital, & VHF/UHF. We start with what the new operator is most interested in learning. We have binders at each station containing “Standard Operating Procedures” for that particular station.

  4. Grant Applications: ARCWV submitted and received an education grant from ARRL to expand the number of amateur radio operators in the area and pilot a Ham Course aimed at youth. We developed a simple brochure describing our program as “Kid and Kindred” hoping to attract youth and adult relative pairs to take the course.


If you have interest and would like a tour of the Radio Room contact any of our officers:

Trustee: Skip Bollens; Pres: Pattilynne Miller-Skeele; Vice Pres: Chuck Graham;

or VE Liaison & Engineer: Ron Thomas