Buffalo Amateur Radio Repeater Association

05/04/2026

Due to a scheduling conflict on Potter Road, this month’s technical committee meeting is canceled. We apologize for any inconvenience.

03/13/2026

Here's a list of equipment that's available from a silent key. If you have any interest in any of the equipment, just send a message via messenger and we can discuss. Thank you

03/05/2026

This is usually a really nice hamfest in Palmyra New York, it's a hundred miles east but it's worth the drive

02/09/2026

Next Monday is the day !!! We are having our annual WinterSwap indoor swap meet (formerly the BARRA Auction) on Monday, February 16, 2026 at St. Bartholomew’s Anglican Church, near the intersection of Sheridan Drive and Eggert Road in Tonawanda.

Admission is $5 and if you wish to sell items, tables are $5/ea. Doors open at 6:30 PM for sellers, everyone else at 7 PM. The event will run until 9 PM. We hope to see you there! We will have some baofeng HTs as door prizes as well

01/22/2026

Less than a month away for our annual BARRA winter swap. Always lots of bargains and bring your stuff to sell as well !

12/27/2025

If you're not too hungover from New Year's Eve, come down to Allegany State Park Quaker side at camp Turner for a POTA activation

10/08/2025

Okay, Mr. Potato.

Around 2012, Boeing engineers used a surprising substitute for human passengers to test Wi-Fi signal strength on planes. Their choice? Thousands of pounds of potatoes. 🥔

To figure out where in-flight Wi-Fi signals were weak, they needed to see how the signals behaved in a cabin full of people. But asking human testers to sit perfectly still for days on end simply wasn't practical.

They needed something that could absorb and reflect radio waves just like the human body. After some research, they discovered that potatoes have very similar properties because of their water content and chemistry.

So, engineers loaded a decommissioned airplane with massive sacks of potatoes, carefully placing them in passenger seats. They nicknamed the project their "Synthetic Humanoid" experiment.

This allowed them to precisely measure signal strength throughout the cabin, identifying dead zones without any of the variables live humans would introduce.

Thanks to these potato passengers, Boeing was able to fine-tune their Wi-Fi systems for optimal performance on commercial flights. ✈️

It’s a strange but true example of clever problem-solving in modern engineering.

10/05/2025

Last month, we relaunched the BARRA Tech Net after a very long hiatus. So far, we have averaged twenty-three check-ins per week. In September, we had three stations with perfect attendance: Dave W2ZZA, Roy KA8BYU, and Jeremy N2UGS.

We're planning on issuing perfect attendance certificates monthly to the stations that have perfect attendance. Be sure to join us every Wednesday at 8 PM ET/5 PM PT for the BARRA Tech Net - and "Bring a friend."

The Net Control team extends sincere thanks to all who have participated so far — your questions, comments, and presence are what make the Tech Net great. We also want to extend a special thank you to Greg K2GTM, co-founder of the BARRA Tech Net, who joined us via EchoLink recently and shared historic materials from the early days of the net, now over twenty years ago.

09/17/2025

Join us tonight at 8 PM ET/5 PM PT for this week's installment of the BARRA Tek Net. Tonight's net control is Jeremy N2UGS. Now that we learned about AllStar two weeks ago with N4NJJ and EchoLink with KC2XD last week, Jeremy is going to lead an exploration of the differences between the two modes.

Check in on the WA2HKS 444.000 MHz repeater in Buffalo, any of the N4NJJ repeaters in Vegas, AllStar hub 52515, or look for N2UGS-L on EchoLink.

BRING A FRIEND!

09/10/2025

Tonight is the second installment of the revamped BARRA Tech Net. The net will begin at 8 PM ET/5 PM PT on the WA2HKS repeater (Buffalo) and the N4NJJ repeaters (Las Vegas). Be sure to bring a friend!