Courtesy of W2DEN, Den with the Sarasota Amateur Radio Club. Posted to their Groups.io reflector on 9/19/20. During the COVID-19 crisis, face-to-face meetings among hams has been severely restricted and many new hams to the area needed some clarification of just who was who in the Sarasota County hamvers.
SRQ ARES is a service consisting of licensed amateurs who volunteer for communications duty in the public service when disaster strikes. As a service SRQ ARES does not own any equipment and does not have a budget. SRQ ARES organization follows the ICS guidelines reporting to the ARRL West Central Florida (WCF) Section Emergency Coordinator (SEC). SRQ ARES relies on local clubs to provide equipment such as go-boxes, repeaters, MESH networks etc. SRQ ARES communicates with its members via the SRQ ARES Groups.io, the SRQ ARES Web site and a Thursday evening (7 PM) net.
SERC Sarasota Emergency Radio Club, a 501(c)(3) not for profit organization, is a general purpose ARRL Affiliated club open to all who have an interest in amateur radio. SERC encourages all types of amateur radio activities from DMR to contesting to hamfests etc. SERC owns, operates and maintains 4 repeaters, call signs N4SER and W2DEN, as well as most of the digital equipment in the county including the AREDN MESH, Packet radio, and VARA FM gateways. SERC communicates with its members via the SERC Groups.io, the N4SER.org web site and a Wednesday evening net at 7 PM. The word ‘Emergency’ in the name is historical and has no significance.
SDG Sarasota Digital Group. Formed originally to put the Red Cross packet Winlink gateway back on the air, the group has evolved into a general purpose work service. SDG does not exist as an entity having no formal structure nor any type of budget. SDG does maintain a user supported slush fund, all purchases, such as Pactor modems, are donated to SERC. Prior to COVID 19 SDG met every Tuesday to spend a few hours working on the ‘project of the week’. This includes the complete rework of Redcom (more than once), installing MESH equipment around the county, installing and maintaining the Red Cross antennas and the SHARES gateway, testing new technologies etc. SDG is available to ALL local amateur radio clubs if needed. We have assisted SARA installing their MESH equipment on Sarasota memorial Hospital..SDG communicates with its members via the SDG groups.io, a SDG web page on the N4SER.org site ( a bit dated) and a digital training net every Wednesday at 9 AM on the W2DEN repeaters.
Additional clubs in Sarasota county (acronym is a link to their web sites):
SARA Sarasota Amateur Radio Association.
NPARC North Port Amateur Radio Club.
TARC Tamiami Amateur Radio Club.
EARS Englewood Amateur Radio Society
Additional acronyms can be found in the N4SER,.org Elmer web pages. (Link)
