Minutes of Meeting – July 05, 2011

The meeting was called to order by our President, Mike, KC9AOM, at 1900. Mike announced that this was a combined ARC/Comm. Division meeting and we’d conduct our meeting until the instructor arrived.

Everyone reported receiving their Newsletter and upon a motion of Gene,KB9WI and second by Larry, KB9SCC, all members present voted to accept the Minutes as printed.

As noted in the Newsletter Larry Wisehart, N9HJJ, is now a Silent Key. We were glad to see Phil, WB9ULR, in attendance at this meeting during his recovery for a knee replacement.

.82 Repeater Report – Phil, WB9URL, reported that he has identified problems when he tried to reset the clock at the first of the month. He couldn’t access the controller by phone. Also the Digital Voice Recorder hasn’t been working for awhile. The Autopatch does work allowing outbound calls. Phil talked to the CAT 1000 (ACC) people and they suggested sending it back for repair. The Technical Committee has not been up to the site yet to do any troubleshooting.

There was a lot of discussion. The repeater will work without the controller, but it doesn’t have any features or ID, so we have to manually ID it. Tom, W9EEL, noted that the CAT1000 is still available and we could buy a new one and fix the old one. It is, however, old technology since we bought it in 1995 and their design is still the same. Price is still about $1,000. It has a lot of capability and features that we don’t use. Perhaps we could find a controller that is less expensive and still has the features we need. Guido, WB9ZJR, reported that there is not agreement within the Technical Committee as to the strategy yet since they haven’t troubleshot it.

Kuby, N6JSX, suggested that there might be lower cost controllers available that had the features we need and we could buy two for the price of one CAT1000. No one has really looked into what is available but we don’t think there are too many.

Charlie, K9TZJ, offered a motion that the Technical Committee be empowered to evaluate the alternatives and spend up to $1,500 for replacement. There was no immediate second.

Tim, KB9VE, reported that the Treasury is only $1700, so we need to decide if we can spend all of our funds for a new controller. He also suggested looking at www.repeaterbuilder.com for information and suggestions. There were other questions and suggestions. The Technical Committee is going to schedule a visit to the site tomorrow and do a “hard reset” to see if that will help. After other troubleshooting they will continue to determine the best alternative.

The repeater is still fully operational, but we’d have to manually shut if off as opposed to using the phone line to shut it down until we get the problem fixed. It was also mentioned that there are additional inputs that would allow for a UHF repeater for control if we elected to do it.

A second to Charlie’s motion was made by Tim, W9TCR, after it was amended to a maximum of $1,200 to spend by the Technical Committee. By voice vote all were in favor.

Treasurer’s Report – Tim, KB9VE, reported that the initial Checking Account balance was $1,801.74. Disbursements of $20.94 for a two year renewal of the domain name, $25 memorial contribution in memory of N9HJJ, and $62 for the Post Office Box. The ending balance is $1,693.80. A motion to approve was made by Tom, W9EEL, seconded by Charlie, K9TZJ, and all were in favor.

.09 Repeater Report – Tim, KB9VE, reported it is still “rock solid” with no issues. He did have to reboot the computer once and found the BIOS battery was dead. He replaced it and all is well.

UHF Repeater – Steve, WA9CWE, reported that it has been down for about a week. He visited the site and found the receiver dead. Upon checking by Dan at AMK Services (was Lectro) it was found that the receiver VCO wasn’t stable anymore. Dan tried to find a new VCO and/or a new receiver board. The repeater which is a 1994 purchased Kenwood, hasn’t been any problem, but parts are no longer available. The entire package may need replacement (This is an EMA system). He hopes to be back on in a couple of weeks.

.82 Repeater – Phil, WB9URL, has noticed that the deviation level of the repeater is low as compared to .09 and others. He suggests that the Technical Committee adjust the audio level upward when they troubleshoot the repeater.

Web Site – Paul, KC9BKZ, the Webmaster, reported that the site is doing well with a lot of people visiting it. In order to keep them coming back we need to update it with new information regularly. Anyone with info to contribute please forward it to him. There was discussion about the “spam” that those of us who receive mail directed to the Club get. Several members offered suggestions as to how our email address is obtained and how it can be changed to make it harder to “mine”. Tim and Paul will work together to look for an easy solution. It will NOT affect the web site address, just the email address for those who want to send us messages.

Kuby, N6JSX, has noticed that our site does not list the address of our meeting place, the EOC. He thought that it should be listed. Traditionally, we have offered it to anyone who asked. Dick, K9FOI, offered that we have wanted to keep the location of the EOC unlisted to minimize problems, and we’ve been successful so far. We’d prefer to maintain our present plan of sending it to people who ask.

Weather Update – Tom, W9EEL, briefly discussed the current conditions.

Upcoming Events – Indy Hamfest is this Saturday.

New Member Applications - None

Old Business – None

New Business – None

Show-And-Tell – Paul, KC9BKZ, showed the handheld radio carrier that he had made. It will hold 4 handhelds and a spare battery for each. With it he can keep his handhelds together and if he needs to deploy he can grab it and be assured he has all of his radios plus a spare battery. He made it from Oak, so it’s very attractive.

Dick, K9FOI, discussed Project Lifesaver and how we got involved and what it can offer to the Community. He reported that we have one RDF unit and APD and MCPD also have one each. We may buy a couple more. The man who was suppose to provide the training did not arrive, so Steve, WA9CWE, passed around the equipment and discussed the technical information that we know. It’ll be a lot like the ARDF’ing that we’ve done on two meters in the past. We discussed some techniques and how we will probably utilize it when needed. This will also be a good opportunity to do transmitted hunts. We discussed amateur and scanner receivers that we think will be usable for this application. Additional testing will be done. We will be practicing with the equipment outside the building after the meeting.

Kuby, N6JSX, announced that he has a Yahoo Users Group for ARDF’ing. It’s called RDF-USA . He says that it contains a number of articles on DF’ing and lots of equipment articles.

The door prizes, NWS monitors were won by Jon Fields, KC9PWR and Dale Bales, KV9W.

The meeting was adjourned at 2015. There were 23 present.

Respectfully submitted,
Steve Riley, WA9CWE, Secretary