SAN BRUNO — Members of the San Bruno Amateur Radio Club made quick work of club business this week before settling in for an evening devoted to digital radio technology, a firsthand report from Tokyo's most famous camera store, and updates on the club's growing role in local emergency communications.

New Bylaws Adopted

The meeting opened with a vote on two bylaws revisions the membership had discussed the previous month. The first shifts the club's membership year from the traditional January-through-December calendar to an October-through-September cycle, aligning SBARC with the federal fiscal calendar. Club leadership said the change addresses a longstanding problem: asking members to renew and pay dues in the first months of the year, when many households are still recovering from holiday spending. Under the new schedule, the board will also have a clearer picture of membership numbers and available budget heading into each new year.

The second change moves up the club's officer nomination and election timeline by one month. Nominations will now take place in October and elections in November, with new officers taking office January 1 — replacing the club's original schedule of November nominations and a December election held at the club's holiday gathering. Both measures passed by unanimous voice vote.

A Deep Dive into DMR

The evening's featured program came from Ralph Kugler, KC6YDH, who walked members through the fundamentals of Digital Mobile Radio, or DMR — a digital voice standard originally developed for commercial use by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute and later adopted enthusiastically by amateur radio operators worldwide.

Kugler explained that DMR's open standard means no licensing fees stand in the way of manufacturers, which is why inexpensive Chinese-made radios flooded the market once cost of the required chipset dropped — a dynamic he contrasted with Japan, where amateur operators have largely stuck with the rival D-STAR digital standard instead.

Much of the talk centered on how DMR squeezes two simultaneous conversations onto a single repeater frequency using a technique called time-division multiple access, which splits transmissions into alternating time slots roughly 30 milliseconds apart. Layered on top of that, Kugler explained, are "talk groups" — essentially digital channels that let operators filter for the conversations they want to hear, from statewide nets to niche interest groups. He traced the technology's growth from Motorola's original 19-repeater-capacity system to Brandmeister, the largest of several ham-built, donation-supported global networks that now link thousands of repeaters and personal "hotspots" across nearly every country in the world.

Using Brandmeister's live monitoring website, Kugler demonstrated real-time traffic maps, showed the club's own regional coverage anchored by the Mount San Bruno repeater, and briefly connected with a fellow ham checking into a North America talk group from southwest Missouri — a small but effective illustration of DMR's reach. He also covered the basics of getting started: registering for a free Radio ID, the role of low-cost "hotspot" devices for always-on access to specific talk groups, and how operators can even create their own personal or event-specific talk groups.

A Postcard from Yodobashi Camera

Siddhartha Jain, WV6U, shared highlights from a recent trip to Japan, focusing much of his account on Yodobashi Camera — the sprawling, multi-story electronics retailer he described as "a candy store if you're interested in cameras." Jain and fellow members swapped stories about the store's floor-by-floor organization by camera brand, its willingness to let customers handle thousands of dollars in lenses and equipment off the shelf, its brisk trade in used gear, and its famously incongruous in-store soundtrack: an English-language rendition of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." The conversation turned into a broader appreciation of Japan's still-thriving brick-and-mortar retail culture — a sharp contrast, several members noted, to the shrinking camera-store landscape in the Bay Area — as well as the safety and hospitality Jain said he encountered throughout the trip.

Club Business and What's Ahead

Club president Dave Dornlas, KN6KOO, closed out the meeting with several updates. He encouraged members to attend Pacificon 2026, the annual amateur radio convention in San Ramon set for mid-October, where he plans to help staff the AREDN mesh-networking booth. He also urged members who haven't completed CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) training to sign up, noting that a new San Bruno session had just begun.

Dornlas gave a brief update on Seabiscuit Reporter, the web-based field reporting tool he has been developing for use over the club's AREDN mesh radio network. The application is designed to let volunteers submit "windshield report" style damage assessments — including photos — from the field directly to the city's Emergency Operations Center during a disaster, even when conventional internet and cell service are unavailable.

The meeting also welcomed several newcomers, who introduced themselves alongside longtime members, and closed with the club's acceptance of a donated AnyTone mobile DMR radio from member Kerry, who will receive a donation letter for the gift. The club has not yet decided how the radio will be put to use.