[FPARC] MINUTES OF JANUARY MEETING

[kd4spw at aol.com]

           FORT PIERCE AMATEUR RADIO CLUB - MINUTES -  1/11/2006
 
      The regular monthly meeting of the Fort Pierce Amateur Radio Club was chaired by  President, Art Lindell, W4ZEF.  Attendance was 13. Visiting was Cliff Haycock, KD4ZBP.
 
      MINUTES: The minutes of the January meeting were approved, with corrections, as distributed, after motion by Bill, N4XEO, seconded by Bob, KC0KAC.
 
      TREASURY: Treasurer Carl, KF4KCI?s report was approved as distributed after motion by Bill, N4XEO seconded by Paul, KG4MCE.
 
                                        Total funds:      (designated for WQCS: $30)                     $3157.60.
 
      Bill, N4XEO, started a discussion about whether we should delete our treasury amount from the minutes before they are posted distributed electronically, such as on our e-mail list. After discussion, we agreed to leave the treasury data in the minutes when sent to the e-mail list, but to not post minutes or treasury data on our webpage.
Treasurer Carl, KF4KCI, said 26 2005 members have not yet renewed their dues. Pete, KD4SPW, said he would send a reminder e-mail to the list. Pete, KD4SPW, said he received an e-mail from QSL.NET asking for donations. Bill, N4XEO, said QSL.NET provides us with both our web site hosting and our e-mail list. Pete suggested anyone interested please donate. He said donation funds can be sent using PayPal from QSL.NET. Bill, N4XEO, said he send the club's donation.
 
                                                         OLD BUSINESS
    
      HAMFEST:  Art, W4ZEF, said he was disappointed in the amount of votes he received to decide Hamfest prizes. He said the grand prizes will be a Kenwood TMD-700A and an MFJ 259B antenna analyzer. Art passed around a tentative Hamfest flyer. We discussed a few changes, but it looks good. Bill, N4XEO, reminded us to get business cards and flyers from vendors at the upcoming Hamfests, so we can invite them to ours.
      Art said we should discuss flyer mail-outs. We discussed sending flyers to clubs and vendors, and sending postcards to individuals. Art noticed that other clubs are sending their flyers only about a month before their Hamfests. Joe, KD4BTD, said he would try printing the the flyer at post card size without the bottom vendor registration area. We agreed to distribute flyers at the Miami and Orlando, and Stuart Hamfests,  send flyers to clubs and previous table vendors, and send post cards to other individuals. The flyers and post cards will have our club web site, which will also have Hamfest information.
 
      President Art, W4ZEF, again discussed tape recording meetings. He reminded us again how difficult it is to follow the recording when more than one person is talking at a time. Art said he would like to record the meetings digitally. Joe, KD4BTD, agreed to try to digitally record the meetings with WQCS studio audio. Carl, KF4KCI, said that we used to have shorter business portions of our meetings and then have meeting programs. He said that would take up less recording time. We discussed how much off-topic talk and chit-chat takes place during the meeting and eats up time. We decided to try making our business portions a little shorter. Hopefully then we can have some programs in the future. 
 
      REPEATER:   Art, W4ZEF, said our repeater has been one big headache. Art said that Greg, KB4VVE, is going to see if the County can help and get Ernie, KF4IHX, out here to the repeater site to work on our repeater. Art asked for suggestions, but said if it can?t be fixed here, he would like to have the complete assembly taken to Dave?s Communications and have it gone through and tested until it is right. 
      Carl, KF4KCI, discussed separating the two repeaters again. He reminded us about how in the past we were going to mount one of them high up on the wall in the WQCS transmitter room. He asked if he should ask Randy about it. Art, W4ZEF, said yes please do. Art said we need to investigate every possible option. We also discussed having our repeaters outside in an out building as we had hoped in the past would happen. 
      Bill, N4XEO, suggested a few things we can try. He said Kevin. W4KKW, will try deprogramming the tone function. Art said we can try another controller. Bill thinks we might still have a controller problem from a previous lightning strike. Bill asked Paul, KG4MCE, to wire up controller adapter cables, so we can anytime swap the two controllers or try spares. Bill said at the upcoming Hamfests, he will get some shielded audio cables so we can rewire the repeaters and clean them up both physically and electronically. Art said we need to move fast. He said if we can?t get Ernie here, then we will rewire it. He said if that doesn?t work we have to pay to get it fixed properly. We agreed to make adapters, swap our controllers, try a loner controller, and rewire both repeaters, each as soon as we can.
 
                                                          NEW BUSINESS
      
      President Art, W4ZEF, read a letter from Wayne, KA1VRF, thanking the club for  the loan of  our club trailer to use at the National Weather Service SKYWARN RECOGNITION DAY. Wayne said it worked very well, but it seems someone ran a big amplifier through our R7 antenna, which was damaged. He also mentioned how slow the tower crank is.
 
      The meeting was closed at 20:48 hours.
 
      ATTENDANCE:  KD4SPW, W4RPE, W4ZEF, N4XEO, WA4NGR, WB4NOZ, KD4ZBP, 
                                    KF4KCI, KG4MCE, KC0KAC, W4KKW, K4ZEF, KD4BTD.
 
                                                           Submitted by Secretary Peter Amar, KD4SPW.