April 2009 Meeting Minutes

President Mike opened the meeting at 7:05 pm at the Glenn Raymond School in Watseka. The March minutes were read and approved. The treasure’s report was read and approved.
Committee Reports

Incorporation and Non-Profit Committee—None

Technical Committee— Carl K9CS was added to the tech committee. K9CS and K9TA tightened the connectors on repeater and noise appeared to be better.

Program Committee— The meeting for next May will be at the Park District office on the corner of Third St and Cherry St. Carl and others will build some field day antennas as a learning project.

Publicity Committee—KC9GNH and KC9OQM have been working on the web site and it seems to be leaner and easier to read.

ARES Liaison—None

Red Cross Liaison—K9CS reported the Doug Walker is willing to come to Watseka to teach a Disaster Assessment class on May 9th. Tell Carl if you are interested.

ESDA Liaison—Drills planned with public health dept and hospital. This is to be a full scale in June of this year.

VE Liaison—Carl reported that testing could be at Glenn Raymond School on May 20 or 21st, also testing will be held at the Kankakee ham fest on July 19th.

OLD Business

Dues for 2009 were collected from a total of 19 members and we hope that a few more will pay dues next month.

ESDA is planning to have a weather spotting school on April 14, 2009 and we are to encourage hams and other public safety groups to attend. The meeting place will be in Crescent City grade school at 6:30 pm.

Thanks to Clay N9IO the APRS machine is now a super digi and seems to work very well at the east site.

NEW Business

Field Day fever is planned for Glenn Raymond again this year. Field Day captains are Carl, Tim, Chris M. and Troy.

Chris M. is to talk to Sherry at the park district to see if they would be able to offer us a place to meet if we could not use GRS for some reason. We plan to use the park district office for the May meeting.

Chris M. has offered to make a personalized ham decal for the back of your car or truck. Let him know if you want one. Chris had new V8 handheld with GPS and Blue tooth and pressure gauge for show and tell.

Janet brought in a large amount of ham items from the AES ham fest and shared with all members. Two ham fest hats were won by W9LIZ and KC9OQO. Both were seen proudly wearing them to their cars after the meeting. Chris was wearing hers “rapper” style.

Field day 2009 garb is on sale on the ARRL web site.

Carl and Chris S. donated a new Tech Q&A manual to the growing club library.
Mike has a possibility of getting a slightly damaged RFI antenna for some of our radio equipment.

Benny brought in a 900 Meg yagi antenna, and Scott brought his home made 2 meter beam for show and tell. While Benny’s yagi was better made Scott’s was a lot cheaper (free)—made from old TV antenna.

Members discussed the Monday night net. All seemed to agree that the main purpose of the net is to train our members on proper net operation.
A second purpose is to foster good relations and friendship with both the KARS and ICARC groups. We can all encourage local hams to check in on Monday night.

Snacks for this month were by Tim and Janet. May snacks are to be brought by Justin.

Net control for 4/13 Jake, 4/20 Scott, 4/27 Roy, 5/4 Brian, 5/11 Benny

Members present for the Feb meeting were Carl, Chris S, Troy, Steve, Jake, Tim, Keith, Chris M, Roy, Gery, Rollie, Scott, Mike, Phil, Janet, Justin, Paul, Benny and Sam.

Guest was Daniel Focken and Harry WD9FYF

Meeting was adjourned at 8:38.

Program was by Carl on the making of dipole antennas for our field day effort.

Sam Ripple W9QKF Sec.

Sam Ripple W9QKF KAE7607