[LeArc] Aug. Meeting Summary

[Jesse Risley]

There were seven people present at the August 11th business meeting: six members.

Mac (N9RGF) reported that the Colchester Libray ham radio demonstration event was a success, save for the lack of participation by the ham community.  The more members that can show and help with publicity like this the better!

The club discussed some recent criticisms that have been raised about the lack of any diverse programs or topics of discussion at the meetings.  Don Johnson is working on putting together programs of interest for the club each month, and this will hopefully appeal the ham community.  We enjoyed Don's program for this month, which was a video on the merits of amateur radio hosted by the late Walter Cronkite.  However, it was also stressed that the business meeting is just that, a time once per month for the club to gather and discuss pertinent items of interest to club matters.  As such, a regular, tabled agenda needs to be maintained per Roberts Rules of Order and the club's constitution.  While the addition of Don's programs might help reduce the mundane order of regular business affairs, those items still must be completed each month.  We will work on taking a break after 45 minutes of business meetings, and try to shorten the meetings and curtail
 sidebar discussions to address some of these concerns.

New Business:  There appears to be a lack on interest in either participating in or running the nets.  The idea of whether or not to continue regular Sunday evening nets has been tabled, though it was agreed that we need more members who agree to participate and run the nets if the club wants to maintain a weekly net schedule.  At this time there are no more Sunday evening nets.  

Mark (KA9SZX) also reported that he has a new beacon on the air, transmitting on 13.563 MHz.  If is an HiFer transmitter under Part 15 rules, with more information to be found at http://www.lwca.org (Long Wave Club of America).