Southwest Iowa Amateur Radio Club

The Southwest Iowa Amateur Radio Club, or SWIARC, is a non-profit organization dedicated to ham radio. The club meeting location is in Council Bluffs Iowa while the majority of members are from both eastern Nebraska and western Iowa, primarily within the EN21 and EN11 to a lessor amount. Each year in March the club holds a flea market or "hamfest" in the small town of McClelland Iowa.

K0SWI SWIARC - SouthWest Iowa Amateur Radio Club
Locations: Council Bluffs IA, McClelland IA

SWIARC has the following Internet presence media:

Internet web site: www.swiradio.org
Grous IO site: swiarc.groups.io
Facebook social media: link disabled
Broadcastify: K0SWI 146.8200 MHz South West Iowa ARC Repeater

Review

SWIARC is a very large club for the area it is in and operates two amateur radio repeaters. The club's primary repeater K0SWI VHF has an impressive coverage footprint. The repeater lacks a PL tone for access. The repeater also has two receive sites for better receive coverage. The repeater on 146.82 MHz is considered by many the most active area ham radio repeater. The secondary repeater is a lower power UHF repeater with limited coverage and mix mode operation.

Members of the SWIARC club are involved in many club sponsored activities including a number of radio field events and annual participation in ARRL Field Day in June. The club also has an annual dinner in December.

Club officers are elected by members. Election for club president occurs on an annual basis. The club has a constitution of by-laws available for review by club members and the public. Club membership is available to anyone at a very reasonable annual fee.

Criticism: Some critics of the club have cited repeated FCC violations on the repeater including use of inappropriate language and failure of amateur operators to identify themselves. Sometimes conversations on the repeater have been described as somewhat "tacky" or lacking in good taste. The repeater has been cited by Omaha area ARRL Official Observers to make the club and trustee aware of observed problems.

It should be noted that as it is likely the most active repeater in the area it resides, it will be more likely to have the occasional poor operator just by volume. More people means more bad people as well as good people no matter where you go. The club has taken measures to improve conditions, however, more could be done. Although problems have been observed, nothing in particular has ever been seriously egregious and for the most part conduct on this Nebraska repeater is of a much higher standard than the average VHF repeater in California. The removal of a couple nighttime operators would clean up the majority of aforementioned problems as one in particular is responsible for vocabulary resulting in one of the most recent Official Observer notifications.

In a balanced review the bad has to be mentioned along with the good. The repeater is considered "family friendly" during the daytime and the repeater trustee is of good character as well as taking repeater operation seriously. It is certainly a very open repeater with the highest likelihood of ham operator response on a request for QSO made by locals as well as visitors passing though mobile. No other repeater in the Omaha/Council Bluffs area probably has as high of a ham call response rate.

Details for this review were offered by multiple ham radio operators as a collaborative effort to prevent bias.