August 8, 2002 Willow Crossing Attendance 16 led by club president, Joe, KA9OPL Secretary's minutes of the July meeting were read by Steve, KB9QFT. Approved as read. Lois, KA9IOS, read the treasurer's report for both June and July, including income from recent additions in membership and some of our recent expenses from Field Day and repeater repairs. Approved as read. Old business: Scotty, KB9WCQ reports that the Franklin repeater, 146.835 as mentioned last month is still not as high as it was at one time but does seem to operate well from the Columbus area. Upcoming classes- Mike Riley, N9LTT, talked about the thirty-one lesson format outlined in the ARRL's teacher guide for the popular "Look Who's Talking" series. Discussion... we would like to do these in four to six weeks. A list of 'Volunteer-Assistant-Teachers' were taken. Discussion was concerning code instruction. There does appear to be an interest in providing CW instruction in addition to the Tech license Elmering. (Yeah, I checked at least someone else has used it as a verb!) Suggestion was that the quiz instruction be held in the first hour and the CW would follow. CW classes would apply to all license classes since the CW requirement is now 5wpm for any of the higher licensing levels. Questions were brought up concerning a minimum enrollment. Mike mentions the number five? Field Day numbers have been submitted by David Dye, KB9RBC. No report was available. Next year a wireless internet access demonstration may be set up at our F.D. site. - N9LTT New business: The recent brief failure of our repeater was attended to by Ken Delap, KA9MQA, and Marion Winterberg, WD9HTN. The repeater was down from Monday to Thursday (today) afternoons. This may have been contributed to by a battery failure. A board failure was also found. This was remedied by swapping our hardware for an identical unit from Burt Baltus, N9LQP. Burt recommended that we replace our battery with a new sealed deep cycle unit and replace our trickle charger with an automatic one which samples the battery status and charges only as necessary. Marion got board member approval to go ahead with these purchases yesterday. Club membership confirmed this approval at tonight's meeting. The Club thanks these three for their willingness, skill, and swift hard work at getting us back on the air. The recent repairs have made available the ability to require a PL tone for input to our repeater. Our repeater already outputs a tone of 100 Hz. This output tone can be used to insure that you hear only our repeater and not unwanted transmissions of 146.790 MHz. Similarly the input tone will block 146.190 transmissions without the proper PL tone from triggering our repeater. This will eliminate transmissions not intentionally aimed at our repeater from causing annoying unintended hits. The input tone frequency is preset to 100Hz, the same as the output. Discussion concerned the desire to implement this input tone requirement. ********** A motion was made to implement an input tone of 100Hz on the Columbus Amateur Radio Club's repeater [146.790-] as of October 1, 2002, except for regularly scheduled net meetings and emergency situations (including severe weather nets). Motion seconded. Discussion included concerns for those with equipment without PL tone capabilities, regular but transient users of our repeaters being unaware of the required input tone, and allowing adequate time that all local users be informed of the change. Motion passed. It was allowed that the input tone may be activated prior to October 1 to promote awareness, general testing, and to block any unintended transmissions or interference immediately. Don't be caught without repeater access, get out those manuals and program in the 100Hz input tone for the CARC 146.790 repeater now! This is not intended to make our repeater closed. This 100Hz input tone will be public knowledge. Our club repeater remains open to all properly licensed amateur radio operators. Mike, N9LTT, has the club's approval and our encouragement to make use of Echo Station, automated transmission software, http://www.synergenics.com/sc/, on our repeater to make regular announcements concerning the upcoming input PL tone implementation. It may also be used to promote our regular meetings, weekly on-the-air nets, and for other appropriate messages. ********** The polyphaser, lightning protection device, recently replaced on our repeater was passed around for all to see. Amazingly small for the important job it serves. It had been thought to be the source of occasional static on the repeater. Lois Winterberg, KA9IOS, club treasurer, asked for approval to pay the annual installments for our liability and equipment insurance due September 1. Motion made, seconded, passed. Marion asked that members pencil in for September 28th the local "Asthma Walk", a fund raising event, for which we may provide radio support. More discussion will be at our Sept. meeting. Brochures advertising upcoming hamfests: Louisville, Bullitt County Fairgrounds September 7 http://mx2.confluentasp.com/~glha/ Cincinnati September 22 http://w3.one.net/~rkuns/expo2001/ Bedford October 6 http://www.hoosierhillshamfest.org/ Mark on the calendar September 28 for possible radio support of the local "Asthma walk". More information and discussion will be held at our September meeting. Net control for September will be the willing volunteer Scotty, KB9WCQ. Refreshments for the September meeting will be provided by Steve, KB9QFT. Dismissed 9:10pm