March 1997

March Meeting

The next CMRA meeting will be held on Tuesday, March 11, 1997 at 7:00 p.m. in the Boone Hospital cafeteria. A VE exam session will follow the meeting ( provided there are three VE's on hand.) Our meetings should return to Boone Electric (our traditional location) as of the May meeting.

February Minutes

The meeting was called to order at 7:10 by our new Fearless Leader, Robert, KB0TCR. Dewey, WM0H, read the minutes of the January meeting. There were no reports from the Treasurer or Technical Committee. Perry, N0NMC, has offered his services as Chairman of the Hamfest Committee. (More on the Hamfest in a bit.)

Club Breakfast

Our February breakfast was well attended, with about 16 people in attendance. The food was good, the company better. As always, had a great time just visiting The next breakfast will be held March 29th at 8:00 a.m. at Country Kitchens Restaurant on Providence Road. Hope you can make it.

Everyone (ham or not) is welcome!

Hamfest committee

The hamfest committee has met twice since the last meeting, and lots of progress is being made. We have an official date and place set up. The 1997 CMRA Hamfest will be held on September 6, 1997 between 8:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m.. It will be held at Good Time Country on Highway 163, which is just South of Columbia. We will be able to get the doors open for vendors about 9:00 p.m. the Friday evening before the event to allow vendors to set up early. The Flea Market area will be indoors (as well as the commercial area.) We still need to make arrangements for VE exams or any forums we might have. We are presently contacting vendors, then we will be sending out flyers once we have more information. Mark the date on your Calendar. As mentioned above, Perry, N0NMC, has offered his services as Hamfest Chairman, so all hamfest correspondence can be addressed to him at his email address:

pogletre@mail.coin.missouri.edu

or to his mail address:

Perry Ogletree

3609 Bray Ave.

Columbia, Mo. 65203-0877

Memorial Day Air Show

Our plans are shaping up for the 1997 Salute to Veterans Memorial Day Air Show. We will have an excellent opportunity to showcase Amateur Radio for the general public. I attended a meeting of the Air Show Committee the day after our last meeting, and it sounds like we will be welcome at the Air Show. We don't have official permission to transmit on any specific frequencies or bands yet from the Air Show Boss, but suspect that won't be a problem. Their concerns would be primarily RFI to their ground communications frequencies ( VHF and / or UHF.) We will do some testing before hand to ensure no problems exist. Don't think there will be problems with HF. If we get permission in time, it would be nice to have a Special Event station going on from the Show. (There might also be a contest going on that weekend, which could prove interesting.) One point that was stressed during the meeting was the fact that there are usually periods of inclement weather during the Air Show, so the crowd is often milling around, looking for something interesting to do when the planes are grounded. Sounds like we could have a semi-captive audience Hi Hi. I'd be hard pressed to think of a better way to get our hobby in the Public Eye. As it stands now, we will have our own tent next to Derek's tent (Derek is our main contact for the Air Show, and last year he had a Great one man show with his telegraph key collection and a few vintage military sets on display.) We will probably be able to set up packet in both tents, as well as getting some HT's together for folks to play with on Simplex. We had a similar set-up going during the JOTA activities last year, and the kids had a great time with packet and FM. If we get more adventurous, we might get some Satellite activity going as well. We will also have some printed material about ham radio and the club on hand for distribution. This should be another date to keep in mind. The Air Show has a Home page, but I misplaced the URL for it. I should have it for our next edition. Be sure to let me know if you can help us out in the tents for a few hours.

Club Dues

As of March 3, we show dues paid by

K0GN, N0REF, KB0PHQ, W0VZK, AE0S, WY0B, N0VVV, N0YEQ, N0NMC, K0ONL, KT5Y, N0JSS, WB0LDJ and Jo Ann Harmon, N0LCW, K4CHS and Ellen, and N0OSS. If I've overlooked anyone, my apologies. Otherwise, you can send your dues to John, KB0PHQ at :

Central Missouri Radio Association

PO Box 205

Columbia, Mo. 65205

Your dues help the club (and Amateur Radio in general) by supporting the K0SI repeater, our Hamfests, this newsletter, and in lots of other ways. Dues are $15.00 per person / $20.00 per family. Such a bargain!

Dates

Meetings:

Second Tuesday of the month:

3/11; 4/8; 5/13; 6/10; 7/8; 8/12; 9/9; 10/14; 11/11; 12/9. 7:00 p.m.

Breakfasts:

Last Saturday of the month:

3/29; 4/26; 5/31; 6/28; 7/26; 8/30; 9/27; 10/31; 11/29; 12/27. 8:00 a.m.

Well, that's about it for this now. Sorry about all the white space, but time has slipped by this month. If you would like to submit an article to the Squelch Tail (or have an idea for an article) just let me know.

73, es CUL ... de WY0B