[W8MWA] Road map to the future?

[MWA Club Mail]

Hello Josh, 

First of all, welcome to the Morgantown area, I hope you find it to be a great place to live and please feel free to get in touch if you need anything radio related or not.

Second of all thank you for coming to our meeting on Tuesday. I will attempt to address your comments/ questions inline below. 

73,
--
Josh Smith - President MWA
KD8HRX

Email/jabber: juicewvu at gmail.com
Phone: 304.237.9369(c)

Sent from my iPhone. 

> On Sep 17, 2015, at 10:55 PM, Josh Prichard <wvunderground at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> So this was my first visit to the club and it has left me a little confused about the situation.  This first visit I wanted to see how the club was and whether it was a club worth joining or not.  Seems like the club may be divided on a lot of things.

Again, thank you for joining us. While I cannot make your decision as to weather or not the club is worth joining, I can say that I've been a member for nearly a decade now and believe it's more than worth the time and relatively inexpensive yearly dies required to be a member. As with any group of people there are definitely some differences of opinion, however I don't believe the club is too deeply divided on many serious issues. 

> 
> Forgive me if I get the names wrong as I honestly stink at names.....
> 
> Michael gave a pretty darn good speech about the organization of the club. 

Yes Michael did give a great presentation and as he mentioned has. Astringent background in helping organizations develop and grow. Speaking as the current president of the club, I look forward to hopefully getting the ball rolling toward implementing some of the ideas he mentioned. 

> He hit on many good points.  Mainly... where is this club heading and how to get more members? 

I never really thought about it before Michael mentioned it but I do believe one of the issues with the club is that for a long time we've tried the be everything to everybody and now is probably. Good time to step back, decide what we want our main area(s) of focus to be and start to focus on them. 

> Spence hit on the future too.  The topic was changed and on went the meeting. 

I agree Spence brought up some excellent points regarding our repeater. We kind of expect it to be there when we want/need it and Bill puts a ton of hard work into making sure it is. But as a club we (at least in the time I've been involved) haven't put any thought or effort into planning for its future and deciding what it might be. 

> Dean brought up that he has echolink/irlp ready to link into the repeater and soon the topic was changed. 

I know historically the previous trustee of the repeater was against the use of these type of systems and immediately dismissed linking them to our repeater. However the trustee changed in recent years so it's probably something we should more seriously revisit. I'll speak with Dean regarding this and we can add it to the agenda for next months meeting. 

> The future won't happen unless some changes are made and the meeting discussions kinda stick to one topic instead of floating around and avoiding topics. 

I don't feel that any topics were intentionally avoided but perhaps that's because I'm seeing things through my own eyes. I do agree with you that a more stringent agenda would likely be helpful for the meetings. 

> Perhaps get a roster of topics for the meeting then allot time to each topic.  
> 
> I'll be new to the club so I don't expect what I have to say to hold much weight as whom wants a new guy coming in and shaking the tree.  I'm curious as to what is growing in this tree and plan to to shake it hard.  So to get to my point.... I still have the question on where this club is going and would like to get a discussion going on the topic.  

Outside perspectives are often the most accurate. I appreciate your well thought out comments and  welcome you shaking the tree as vigorously as you would like in the future. 

> 
> Fusion was mentioned as a possible repeater implementation.
> I'm a  big fan of DMR as I have expressed in previous postings.
> DStar I hear a lot of complaints about and would want to avoid all together.  
> 
> The fusion repeaters can handle both digital/analog.  Can be linked with other repeaters over the internet.  
> 
> The dmr repeaters are pretty much the same.  Can be both digital/analog and linked to many talkgroups over the internet as well.

I unfortunately do not know much about these technologies, especially fusion or dmr. I will say when estate was discussed a few years ago it was decided against due to the relatively (at the time) high cost of the "end use" radios. 

> 
> Since internet is already planned for the repeater sites.... if it happens.... the phone line to the repeater site could be disconnected and the club could save that much money a month.  We also would have internet in place for these digital systems.

I agree that the in-progress internet link to the repeater site will be a huge asset for the club for all of the reasons you mentioned plus probably a thousand others we haven't yet thought of. 

> 
> As of right now I do believe the fusion would be cheaper for the club to get a repeater on the air assuming the deal is still available from Yaesu. DMR costs a tad more for the repeater but is still affordable.  The trade off is on the users side.  Fusion radios are yaesu branded so they cost more for users to use.  DMR has the Chinese radios coming out along with Motorola and a few other brands.  It is cheaper for the user to start into digital territory.  

It seems you have a lot of knowledge about these digital repeater systems - would you be interested in giving an overview presentation  of them at a future. Lin meeting?

> 
> So my thoughts..... Morgantown don't have any digital repeaters that I'm aware of. 

That is correct. 

> The club could be the first to offer such a thing and perhaps would draw in more members. 
> I love playing with new modes and I would assume a lot of other hams do as well. 

I know I enjoy playing with new modes as well and have recently been doing a good bit of experimentation with high bandwidth digital links in the 2.4 and 5 ghz bands. 


> Since the Yaesu repeater would cost the club less.... perhaps get one and replace the current VHF repeater and run it in dual analog/digital mode so at least people whom don't have the digital radios yet can still talk on the repeater.

In my opinion we would be better off operating this in addition to instead of in place of our current repeater. However perhaps some more research on the fusion repeaters would change my opinion on this. 

> Later on if the club starts to get more memebers or something comes along... try to replace the UHF repeater with a DMR repeater.  This would give the Morgantown area the best of both digital worlds.  Perhaps if the club makes it this far.... start to work with our neighbor clubs.... get them on the digital bandwagon and start to create a system that would put the ham talk system to shame. 

I think this is a great goal as I think all (most of us) can agree the future is definitely digital. 

> As of right now I believe there is 1 fusion system and 4 dmr systems in West Virginia.

Do you know where these systems are located? 

> 
> Either direction the club would take would at least open it up to more activity as both systems can be linked to other repeaters/talkgroups.  If not digital right now at least think about opening up and letting echolink/irlp get connected up.  I ran echolink for a while into the local repeater where I used to live and never had a problem out of it.

May I ask where you used to live out of curiosity?

>  
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> Also wow this ran longer than I had expected.....
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