General Meeting Minutes of Lake Amateur Radio Association February 18, 2017
Meeting was called to order by President N4KXO at 10:00 AM
Club recited the Pledge of Allegiance.
Introduction of members and guests:
Monthly Service Honor Roll: John WB4HV for his dedication to the SK cause and working the SK booth at Hamcation. Fred NF2F for working thru all the upgrade issues with the new Quantars. And both John and Fred for the ongoing physical changes inside the repeater building.
MEMBERSHIP APPLICATIONS: 1st reading. None, 2nd reading: Bill Cutler, Terry KD4LB, Richard K9YNY and Brant KM4ZIR. All were voted in.
TREASURER’S REPORT: Was posted on the wall. Motion submitted for acceptance of the report, seconded and accepted. The following balances were reported for January 2017. Sun Trust checking, $1,781.29; Sun Trust Savings, $1,001.29; SKFund, $1,199.14; Investment Account, $17,455.58; Petty Cash, $50.00. The annual audit of the SK fund and the general fund was performed and everything came out clean.
SECRETARY’S REPORT: Was posted on the wall as well as emailed to all members; Motion submitted for acceptance of the report, seconded and accepted.
ENGINEERS REPORT: See attached
ARES: W4ALR- The net operates every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on N4FLA, 147.255 at 7:00 PM, and Packet on 145.01. All are welcome to join us. More volunteers are needed for the shelters. See John WB4HV for details on being vetted by the county have been updates. Gordon K4FL is looking for someone to help him with the training on these kits. You do not need to be vetted by the county to be trained. If normal repeater is out of service follow the frequency plan available on the web at K4FC.org. After some discussion of interference it was decided to move the voice net starting Feb. 22nd to 146.895 (Paisley) until further notice.
QCWA: Using 147.000. A lot of their members use Echolink to check into the QCWA net. Tuesday at 7:30 PM with an average of about a dozen check-ins. Also you will find the QCWA on Friday mornings on 443.150 at 10:00 AM. The QCWA luncheon for today was cancelled. There is also a net on 14.347 MHz 4 PM Sunday and Saturday on 3.940 MHz 9:00am EST. There is also a QCWA cruise coming up in October 18th 2017, info can be had at http://www.qcwa.org. 4 members have already signed up.
SK COMMITTEE: - Hamcation sales were good. Thanks went out to all who helped man the booth at Hamcation. We sold almost $2,500 worth of equipment. Stickers are available to put on your equipment.
MEMBERSHIP COMMITTEE: Don K3DRS. Don reports that 207 service hours were recorded for January 2017. 207 hours have been recorded for the year 2017. Only those members that have taken the required Incident Command System courses and have been vetted by Lake County, and receives a badge have their volunteer service hours recorded. See John WB4HV for an application. Sometime in the future we will have a class on the ICS100 200 and 700 tests.
DX and CONTESTING:
You can find the current contests by looking at the ARRL website/contests
This clubs facility can be made available for members to participate in contests.
Does anyone have any recent DX contacts of interest?
OLD BUSINESS:
The LARA Monthly Lunch is set for the 2nd Wednesday of each month at 11:00 AM time in the meeting room of the Golden Corral Highway 441, Eustis, 16 were present at the last lunch.
CLUB APPAREL - Any questions please see Frank KK4MBX - we now also have a T-shirt vendor separate from Striking Effects. Frank will take orders for new T-shirts.
IRLP - The IRLP station (NODE) is dependent on the 442.900 UHF repeater. The UHF Quantar repeater is in the process of being returned to us from Utah and is due to arrive Feb 21st. After the Engineer NF2F does some bench testing it will be re-installed and placed back on the air by the end of the month.
WEBSITE - As always if you have questions regarding the K4FC.org website, please contact me or any other board member.
Golden Corral - When at the Golden Corral attending a LARA function only, special pricing has been secured. Lunch is $8.50 and Board meeting dinners at $10.00. These prices include drinks and tax. These prices do not include a gratuity.
The old VHF repeater on 147.000 was given to a club in Palm Bay for parts. They sent me a very nice thank you letter. They really appreciated it. They also took the old UHF repeater for parts. They sent a letter of appreciation.
NEW BUSINESS:
STORAGE CONTAINER - We need to do two things with the storage container. First off it needs a thorough cleaning inside and a trip made to the dump. It would be nice if someone with a pickup truck would volunteer to haul a truckload to the dump. Also we need to get the roof secured before we have any leak issues. NF2F will get some prices for the corrugated material.
A new camera security system - has been installed. We are still working out some of the bugs with the system but so far it's mostly working well.
Christmas Dinner - The LARA annual Christmas dinner will be Friday December 8th this year. It will be catered again. We will have a choice of Turkey or Prime Rib. Price will be $10.00 for turkey and $15.00 for prime rib.
Field Day - Looking ahead, this year's Field Day will be June 24th and 25th. (Set up on the evening of the 23rd) At this point we anticipate doing the same operation as last year (4A). I believe Steve KT4Q is interested in chairing Field Day this year. As always we plan to have Field Day at the IPS on Lane Park Cutoff Road in Tavares.
Tailgate - 1st Saturday in November - I'm still looking for a chairman for this year.
Strait KT4YA reminded everyone that the clubhouse has a SEDAN packet system and we need more members to get involved with Packet Radio to check into our ARES nets on 145.01. Help is available for anyone needing in the way of equipment and software. An Elmer session is planned for the future.
SARNET: A new node for the Sarnet system is being set up in the Clermont area and should give coverage in Lake County. Frequency has not been determined yet.
SUNSHINE REPORT: Dave WW4DSP has a serious back problem and the flu. Mike K9SSL is recovering from a bad bug.
Does anyone have anything for the good of the order? HB 555 is the new bill concerning antenna accommodations also known as the Amateur parity act. It has passed the house and now awaiting Senate action.
At the March meeting, newly elected Sheriff Peyton C. Grinnell, will be visiting our meeting.
27 members and visitors present.
50/50 drawing won by Bill Cutler for $10.00 and donated it back to the club.
Meeting adjourned at 10:48am
Submitted by Emil, WA2UPK Secretary.
Engineer’s Report for Feb18, 2017
De NF2F
Royal Harbor UHF – A new gas-fet pre amp has been installed to help the receiver.
Reports back indicate an improvement.
N4FLA/147.255 – Up and running
K4FC/147.000 – The “new” Motorola Quantar repeater has been running fine since installation. Reports of hot audio were remedied with minor deviation adjustments.
K4FC/442.900 – A replacement Motorola Quantar has been shipped out from Dollar Radio Systems in Utah. Anticipated delivery is Feb 21st. A multi relay set will need to be fabricated so that all repeaters can be controlled via the internet. A gas-fet pre-amp will be added and the repeater will be installed ASAP thereafter.
TOWERS – The main 185 foot tower remains in good condition. The birds have not returned.
Cameras – A new higher def camera system was installed on Sunday, Jan 8th. Both the club house and repeater buildings are now camera alarmed and Emails will go to all board members upon entry to either.
Repeater building cleanup continues. Echolink will be relocated to a rack shelf once the UHF Quantar is installed. John, WB4HV has constructed a workbench for the repeater building. Installation will take place based upon our schedules. Thanks John!
IRLP – Down until the Quantar is installed.
A big thanks to Steve Ray KA6NZU for recent Elmer Sessions to help many of us set up our Dstar Radios. Steve also re-programmed the IC 880 in the ARES trailer.