Thank You Letter to WGFA Radio

Dear Club Members,

I wanted to let you know that I am mailing an appreciation letter out to Maggie Martin at WGFA today.

Michael Marcier
President
Iroquois County Amateur Radio Club

July 14, 2009

Maggie Martin
Iroquois County Broadcasting Company

Dear Maggie,

It is with many heartfelt thanks that I pass on the appreciation of the Iroquois County Amateur Radio Club to you and your staff at WGFA Radio.  Your provision of facilities and tower for our repeater, tent for our “Field Day” and WGFA air time in support of our service to the people of Iroquois County and the surrounding region has been a tremendous help to us.

Amateur Radio as you know assists in many communities all over the world to provide emergency communications and support to emergency operations as disasters have come upon our nation.  Our Skywarn storm spotters provide on location eyes to the National Weather Service and report current severe weather activity.

Some of the real impact that many people do not see is our involvement in the lives of people.  Our club has partnered with Glenn Raymond School in the formation of a school based Amateur Radio station.  Through the school’s Science Club and it’s sponsors, Troy Simpson and Paul Wilson, whom have attained an Amateur Radio license themselves, several young people have received their radio licenses and others are in the process of attaining theirs also.  As I and many others of our community can attest, the lives of young people can be greatly impacted by their involvement in Amateur Radio. Many young people’s lives have started down the road of successful careers in communications and electronics technologies due to our club here in Watseka.

So again we want to express our thanks for all your support this year – you are a real blessing to us all!

Sincerely,

Mike Marcier
President
Iroquois County Amateur Radio Club

June 2009 Meeting Minutes

–Iroquois County Amateur Radio Club–
Minutes of the July 9, 2009 Meeting

President Mike opened the meeting at 7:20 pm at the Fire House in Watseka.
The June minutes were read and approved. The treasure’s report was read
and approved.

Committee Reports

Incorporation and Non-Profit Committee—Carl is to pick up and go over
the application for 503 C status. Sam has the annual report for the Sec
of State and the $10 fee ready to be mailed.

Technical Committee—Some people reported trouble getting into 2 meter
repeater and others were getting into machine from many miles north and south.

Program Committee—none.

Publicity Committee—Sam brought copies of publicity in newspapers.
Troy and Sam were on WGFA with Justin promoting “Field Day Fever”
Gov Quinn declared “Amateur Radio Month”. Mike will write a thank you to Maggie Martin
for the tower space and for publicity for FD.

ARES Liaison—Roy is retiring on May 29 and will be going to southern Illinois soon after.
Scott has shown interest in replacing Roy as EC of Iroquois and Ford County.
Roy has resigned as EC and Vice Pres of the Club as of July 15.

Red Cross Liaison—Sam and Tim reported the Red Cross has moved
to a small room at IMH. Red Cross has donated all communication equipment to ICARC.
This includes the low band radio system, ham equipment, antennas, power supplies and
some other equipment. Mike will write thank you letter for the donation. The Red Cross
annual dinner is July 23 rd at the Masonic Lodge at 6:00pm. All volunteers are welcome.

ESDA Liaison—ESDA is improving its radio system and ham frequencies have
been added to the new VHF radio system. We also have UHF radio with ham freqs
but could not afford UHF antenna this year.

VE Liaison—Carl reported that VE testing would be done on July 19th 2009
at the Kankakee hamfest.

OLD Business

Roy KA9MZJ is moving to southern ILL very soon and has resigned as Vice President and EC.
He will be missed. They board will come up with a candidate for the members to
vote on at the next meeting.
Board will be looking for a new trustee for W9RWX in the near future.
This action will require a application to the FCC.

Field day reports were better that last year. We recorded 33 guests including the
Mayor of Watseka (Bob Harwood), and a member of the Iroquois county board
(Susan Wynn Bence)

NEW Business

We have changed the date of the board meeting to the last Thursday of the month.
We are planning to hold the August meeting at Glenn Raymond School.

The Red Cross is planning their annual dinner meeting on July 23 at 6:00pm at
the Masonic Lodge in Watseka. We have a special hand written invitation for all
of the Red Cross radio team to come and eat supper and fellowship with fellow
Red Cross volunteers. Call Sam and let him know if you will be able to attend.
Please call 432-3308 by the 15th of July.

Carl is investigating insurance rates for our liability policy and also for the Kankakee club.

The web site is getting better all the time, if you haven’t looked at it lately go to
www.icarc.com and we think you will be pleased.

We discussed they idea of a remote rx site in Watseka for hand held coverage.
Although we have much of the equipment it would still be a big job to plan for
antenna sites, coax, 440 yagies, tower space, coordination requests and other
problems to overcome.

Their has been discussion about a new State Wide packet system using
WinLink 2000 based email program. Planned frequency is 145.610.

Kankakee is planning two remote rx sites for 34/94 to improve
Skywarn coverage

Net Control 7/13 Troy 7/20 Chris M 7/27 Tim 8/3 Sam 8/10 Benny

Benny provided the wonderful home made Brownies (thanks Dianne)
and ice cold pop. In August the other Marcier brother will try to carry on
with outstanding refreshments for the group’s pleasure.

Members present Chris M, Carl, Justin, Troy, Mike, Rollie, Gery, Roy,
Justin, Benny, Steve, and Sam

Sam W9QKF Sec.

Sam Ripple W9QKF KAE7607

W9GRS School Roundup Results

The results from the 2009 School Club Round-Up are posted at the ARRL website.

http://www.arrl.org/scr

W9GRS took 4th place out of 10 schools in the Middle School Division in the Feb. 2009 competition. We faired quite well overall also. Can’t wait until October!

73!

-Troy
W9KVR