[FCARC] Meeting notes for July 2012

[Craig Szczublewski]

A summary of the FCARC meeting notes for July 16th, 2012:

The meeting was called to order at 7:35pm with 16 members and guests in 
attendance. Introductions were made and minutes from the previous meeting as 
well as the treasurer's report were read and accepted.

Committee reports follow:

Education: The VE Team held a special testing session at Field Day 2012 with 3 
participants, and two passing to General.  The VE team members have also 
assisted at testing sessions in the surrounding counties, assisting both Henry 
and Williams county.  A big "thank you" goes to our VE team who continue to do 
an excellent job with testing responsibilities, but also promoting the good of 
Amateur Radio among the area clubs.  Dave Nelson announced he will be taking a 
temporary break from VE duties for the next several months and handing the 
Liaison position over to myself (KD8KBU) until he feels healthy enough to take 
over the position again.  We look forward to Dave returning to that position. 
For the time being, my contact information can be found on Testing page of the 
www.k8bxq.org website.

KB8ELG is planning on a second Technician class this year.  He reports the Class 
will be taking place September 15, 22, and 29th at the Delta Public Library. We 
have several people already interested for this class and picked up several more 
individuals during the Delta Chicken Festival.

Repeater Committee:  Relocation is still a priority, but a combination of 
excessively hot weather and an overworked repeater committee has not yielded the 
time to finish this project.  We had on outage on the primary repeater after the 
A/C unit gave out and took the fuses with it.  We are currently running with 
environmental controls in the old shack, but this should be short lived as the 
priority level of this project has increased.

The backup repeater site is still inoperable following a lighting hit in May. We 
have performed basic troubleshooting of the equipment on-site and determined 
much of it is a loss.  We have removed the primary components for further bench 
testing ahead of submitting a claim with insurance.

Memorial Committee: As many have heard on the various Nets, John Ankney's 
(KG8XG) mother passed away recently.  Our thoughts go out to John and his family.

Membership: We have 53 paid and lifetime members.  Thanks to all who continue to 
support our club, it helps with the costs of running the club and allowing us to 
maintain and upgrade our repeater.

T-Shirt Committee: No forward movement yet, it is still in the works.

Hamfest Committee: No news, next years Hamfest is back in Tedrow on June 1st.

Field Day Committee: Field Day was a great success despite a malfunctioning 
tri-band antenna and band conditions working against us most of the weekend.  We 
had great attendance from amateur operators around the northwest Ohio region and 
an opportunity to field test the pneumatic mast system.  Further Field Day notes 
and scoring information can be found on the www.k8bxq.org website under the 
Field Day link.

Old Business: Our third year at The Delta Chicken Festival was also a huge 
success.  We had a great number of Amateur operators (some who have not operated 
in years) stop by to see what was new in the world of Ham Radio.  We had a few 
scheduling issues that resulted in some of us not showing up until late on 
Saturday, so a quick personal apology to KD8PUD, sorry you were out there 
Saturday morning with no rigs to play on.  We are trying to get better at this 
"schedule" thing.  We ran two rigs on Saturday afternoon, one for phone and one 
on digital which was received very well.  As mentioned earlier, we had interest 
in the tech class this fall, and the Delta Police thanked us again for our level 
of involvement with traffic control for the Sunday Parade.  The Chicken Fest 
committee has offered to let us enter a float in the parade next year at no cost 
to us, so squirrel that one away and bring us your thoughts on what might make a 
good float.

New Business: The Fulton County Fair is the next major event.  This is a multi 
day fair running August 31 through September 6th.  We need as much help manning 
the booth as we can get over that long period of time.  The weekend is easy 
enough since many of us who work standard workdays can assist through Monday 
(Labor Day).  The remaining days tend to be a little thin though.  If you have 
the time and might want to play radio in a fun environment, let us know as we 
will try to assemble some form of schedule.

Upcoming Events:
Fulton County Fair Aug 31 - Sept 6.
Ohio Parks On the Air, Sept 8th. (we are planning on setting up at Harrison Lake 
State Park this year, the first time this park has been activated)

Upcoming Hamfests:

07/22/2012 Van Wert, OH
07/28/2012 Lansing, MI
08/04/2012 Angola, IN
08/25/2012 Owosso, MI

Next Meeting:  The next regular club meeting will be August 20th at the County 
Administration Building (same as the Drivers License Bureau), 152 S. Fulton St, 
Wauseon.  The club meeting will be at 7:30pm.

Club Nets:

Weeknights at 10:30pm Bud's Midnight Madness Net -- 147.195+
Wed at 8pm Informal Two Meter & ARES Net -- 147.195+
Wed at 9pm 6M Net -- 50.400 AM on the first Wednesday of the month
Wed at 9pm 6M Net -- 52.525 FM Simplex

I think that about covers it, although I'm sure I missed something
...73 for now!

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Craig Szczublewski - KD8KBU