The meeting was called to order at 7:00PM by our President Gene, W0KAD. We had three guests, Ed Lord who is studying for his tech, Doug Fitts, W7FDF and Jack McGowan, KC7DBO, both who are new members.
Carolyn, AB7KC, gave the Treasurer’s report. We have $1448.95 in the Repeater Fund and $1704.03 in the General Fund for a total of $3152.98.
The club station had a major donation by Nils, N1LS, of a Yaesu FT-1000 which is now operating. Come on down and use this great piece of equipment.
The White Elephant Parade will be held on Oct. 28th with many of our members participating.
The Christmas banquet will be Dec. 13th at Canoa, same as last year and it was great.
We need to upgrade our VHF/UHF equipment as the present radio is not working well. A new radio would be under $500 and a committee is studying this.
Ron, VE6RGP, is heading up our technical committee. He reports that the IRLP/Echolink is working well on the 145.27 repeater.
We are fortunate to have Doug Fitts, W7FDF, on the committee. He has extensive experience with repeaters, and is working with Ron on expanding the coverage of the 145.27 machine.
Lloyd, N7GV, stated that his class at Continental school starts next week and is full. He is also going to resume classes for getting your license or upgrade it, so if interested contact him.
We will also participate at the Boy Scout Camporee Oct. 13-15. Around 400 scouts are expected to attend. We will operate a radio station and help scouts build flasher kits.
There have been 18,000 hits on our website or over 3700 people that have checked in, that’s about 17 per day. We need additional people to help maintain the site, no experience necessary.
Rudy, N2EBG, will make you a front car plate with club logo and call sign. He will also make signs with the same information. Contact Rudy for details.
Our excellent speaker was Tom Fagan, WB7NXH, ARRL Section Manager who spoke on Ham Radio today and in the future. Tom gave a well deserved award of a 2006 ARRL Handbook to Lloyd, N7GV.
Tom reviewed the ARRL in Arizona and some of the 47 pages of rule changes that are about to come out. These changes can be viewed on the website www.arrl.org. Many of these changes affect frequencies and Tom will forward these changes to Gene who will forward this information to the membership.
There are over 15,000 hams in Arizona and only 11 other states have more. Tom donated a vertical antenna handbook for the raffle which was won by Bob, AD7FQ.
The meeting was adjourned at 8:30PM.
“Thank You” to Nils, N1LS for his donation of an FT-1000 HF transceiver which is hooked up and ready to go on the SteppIR beam in the Club Radio room. We need more usage of the HF rig, let’s get in there and put GVARC on the air.
“Thank You” to Doug, W7FDF, for his donation of VHF and UHF channelized radios to serve as base stations for the club. The UHF and VHF radios are being installed at this time and will give us a simple but effective presence on those bands when required in an emergency.
“Thank You” to Ron, VE6RGP, who has installed a 449.225 - PL 100.0 repeater at his home with attic mounted ant. Ron will leave it connected via IRLP to the “Dallas Reflector”. There is a lot of activity to listen to on that reflector. You can even jump in and talk if you wish.
The GVARC Web site http://gvarc.us has had several changes and updates recently. Did you know that from the “Our Favorite Links” you can look up other Arizona Amateur Radio Club’s web sites? You can link to a repeater directory to find the frequency for your next trip.
Do you have some radio web pages to share with other members? Pass them on and we can get them listed as a link, making them easy for all to find.
I am looking for members to head up a page or two of the Web Site. They would be responsible to keep those one or two pages [example: Our Favorite Links & Comments] current and find and add new information. Our Webmaster Jon, AD7GS, has offered to post those updates with an eye to training someone in the near future to back up the Webmaster spot.
The Christmas banquet will be held on Dec. 13 [normal monthly meeting night] at the Canoa Ranch Banquet Room, the same as last year. More info. will follow on time, price, etc., as the date gets closer.
Dec. 2, a fun short day at the Titan Missile Museum “Launch 4life” Day. We will be setting up a HF Ham Radio Station using the Site’s Discone ant. Plans are still in the works and BBQ figures in those plans.
These will all be discussed at our meeting in November so we hope for a good turnout.
The IRLP and EchoLink nodes on the 145.27 repeater are operating flawlessly and available for the use of the GVARC members. They are very easy to use and can be a lot of fun.
Recently we have been working on the repeater as we attempt to improve the coverage to the southern part of Green Valley.
If you want to listen to a very active IRLP reflector and you have UHF capabilities, simply tune to 449.225. This is a new repeater that I have put on the air recently that is connected to the IRLP 9453 reflector 24/7.
If you wish to join in the conversation, you need to transmit down 5 MHz. with a 100.0 Hz. Tone.
This reflector channel is used by the WIN System in Southern California to tie many individual repeaters together to make a very large network.
Ron Phillips, VE6RGP
Technical Committee Chairman
Speaker will be Mike Tannenbaum, K2BN, talking about Stealth Antennas.