October 10, 2002 Willow Crossing attendance 21 The meeting was lead by the club president, Joe LaFauci, KA9OPL. Minutes of the September meeting were read by Secretary, Steve Low, KB9QFT. A correction was made to the callsign of Alvin Koffman, as net control for October, his callsign is KA9QLQ. Secretary's report was read by Lois Winterberg, KA9IOS. Report approved as read. Income from the past month was a donation by the Columbus Bicycle Club. The bicycle club sent a letter of thanks for our support during the Honeysuckle Hundred; see it here: www.qsl.net/carc/hh02thnx.jpg Marion Winterberg, WD9HTN, reported on our support of the Sept. 28 Asthma Walk and read a letter of thanks from the organizers. See the letter here: www.qsl.net/carc/as02thnx.jpg T shirts were given to those members who had helped that day with communications support. Alvin Koffman, KA9QLQ, reported his experience during the ARES/RACES Simulated Emergency Testing (SET) drill that was held October 5. Alvin had the role of net control for both organizations and operated with E. "Scotty" Scott from the gazebo of Willow Crossing. Wayne Brooks, N9MUS, ARES coordinator, told that the exercise was an overall success. As an unexpected "chore" a RACES drill was superimposed over the ARES event has might be expected to occur during a real emergency. Jim Anderson, N9KVX, RACES coordinator praised the performance during that portion of the simulation. Marion told of his experience in passing traffic via two meter and HF to Indianapolis and to Terre Haute. Jim, Wayne and others valued the experience for the strengths it revealed and for the areas needing improvement that it exposed. The exercise involved communications on several of the amateur radio bands. A compact disk containing a recording of the club's two meter repeater traffic during the event was provided to the ARES coordinator by KB9QFT. Marion and Joe filled the club in on the continuing saga of the repeater controller and the difficulties in implementing the input tone as previously voted by club membership. Joe has been studying the manual for the S-COM 5K controller, S-COM 5K Version 2.0 Manual (875Kb). Markings indicate that our controller does have the latest firmware 2.0 revision. Joe says that it appears the options we have previously discussed surrounding the input tone might all be possible; including PL tone on/off by DTMF commands, Tone with squelch control, and other possibilities that you may know from other repeater use. Marion was at the site today to hook up required cabling changes and other hardware adjustments to implement the tone. Still DTMF control testing was not successful. There is some question if perhaps DTMF tone input control itself is disabled? Emails from Marion to S-COM confirm that the tone should be able to be implemented in whatever manner we wish, phone calls to the company looking for assistance were polite but less enlightening. Marion has also contacted Burt Baltus, N9LQP, who is familiar with the controller and agrees that the tone implementation is possible. Marion also plans to contact Bill Witt, K9JEE, who has previous experience building repeaters. Work continues. PL tone input or not, Joe suggests we consider using a notch filter to further control interference to the repeater. A notch filter would pass the 146.190 input tone but reject frequencies outside of a very tight tolerance. Marion says that a custom made filter for our machine would be approximately $245. Mike Riley, N9LTT, proposes that we now wait until January 2003, to start the club's Amateur Radio Licensing classes. He suggested the dates of Monday evenings from January 13 to February 17 at the Columbus North High School. He already has names for four volunteer teachers. Mike and several club members have many prospective students expressing interest. Mike has students who are studying now a curriculum which will prepare them to take their licensing exams, and one student who should soon be ready to take the General class test. CW will be a portion of the class curriculum and those who wish to attend just the code portion of the study will be able to do so. Mike mentioned that Federal Grant money related to Homeland Security has grants available for those wishing to take the online Emergency Communications classes offered through the ARRL. For more information check out http://www.arrl.org/ or contact Mike Riley. Scotty invites club members to attend a party that "Sue throws" October 27th in his backyard. Contact Scotty, KB9WCQ, for details. John Burton, KG9DK, brought in an "old" phone patch he had been storing for the club. The unit built from parts including a RS R1040 scanner will be stored by N9LTT at CNHS until the 2003 hamfest at which time it may be sold. Verne Garrett, WA9LCM, has donated to the club a climbing belt - Marion. November net control : Joe, KA9OPL November meeting refreshments: ? , no volunteer. adjourned 8:51pm Special thanks to the Winterbergs for this months refreshments which included persimmon pudding, whipped cream, and apple cider!