What is the Gallatin Ham Radio Club (W7ED) website?

gallatinhamradio.com is the official website of the Gallatin Ham Radio Club (GHRC), a Bozeman, Montana-area amateur radio club that operates under the call sign W7ED. The site is a practical hub for local hams: it lists the club's monthly meetings, weekly and daily radio nets, FCC examination information, contests, events, repeater details, and links to other area amateur radio clubs. If you are a licensed operator in southwest Montana — or studying for a license — this is where you find out when and where to get on the air and meet other operators.

What the site covers

The homepage is organized as a scroll-down reference, with basic club information followed by operational details. Main topics:

• Club information — officers, meeting schedule, and how to join
• Nets — recurring on-air check-ins on local repeaters and HF
• FCC examinations — license testing information
• Get-togethers, contests, and events — social and operating activities
• Repeater info — frequencies, offsets, and access notes
• Area amateur radio clubs — other groups in the region

Meetings and how to join

The club holds an informal monthly meeting on the first Thursday of each month at 7:00 p.m., at the Gallatin County Emergency Management Building, 219 E Tamarack St, Bozeman, MT 59715 (use the north entrance). The format is social rather than procedural — business is discussed only if necessary.

To stay connected between meetings, the club runs a groups.io message reflector. It distributes Zoom meeting links, urgent messages, meeting minutes, and event announcements, and serves as an email discussion list so members receive messages directly in their inboxes. Sign-up is done through the site.

Current club officers listed on the page:

Nets you can check into

The site's most operationally useful content is the net schedule. All are open to check-ins.

The Montana Traffic Net is a Directed Western Relay Net affiliated with the National Traffic System and Radio International, handling traffic with all states, Canada, and other parts of the world where third-party traffic is allowed.

Repeater access note for the Tuesday net

The 146.88 MHz net has a detail worth knowing before you transmit. Two offsets are in play:

• −100.0 Hz offset — direct access to the Bridger Repeater on the mountain peak
• +100.0 Hz offset — access to the Bridger Repeater via the MSU Club antenna on the roof of Cobleigh Hall at Montana State University

At some locations in the Bozeman area the negative offset does not work, or does not work well. In those spots, use the positive offset instead. An offset creates a split between the repeater's transmit (output) and receive (input) frequencies, which is why the choice matters for whether you can key up the machine at all.

Who this site is for

• New or prospective hams in the Bozeman area looking for FCC exam information and a local club to join
• Licensed operators who want a recurring schedule of nets to check into
• Visitors to the Gallatin Valley who want to find a local repeater or club meeting
• Public service volunteers — the club frames amateur radio alongside public service, and meets at the county Emergency Management building

If you are outside the Bozeman/Helena region, the HF nets (3.880 and 3.910 MHz) and the traffic net are the parts most likely to be reachable, depending on propagation and your license privileges.