MINUTES
OF LIDXA INC. MEETING— January 16, 2004
Location:
Briarcliffe College, Bethpage, N.Y.
The LIDXA President, Marty, NN2C, called the meeting of January 16 to order at 8:15 PM. Marty opened up the first meeting of the LIDXA for the New Year, and welcomed all members back after the holiday season. Members present (per sign-in on the blackboard) included K2MFY, KE2LJ, W2GW, NN2C, KX2F, W2FGD, and AG2A.
Marty mentioned that about fifteen members with
their XYLs showed up at the Holiday Party meeting on December 11, at Mary’s Backyard restaurant in Bethpage. The food was excellent and all participants
had a good time.
In terms of DX, specific activities were highlighted:
·
Band conditions have gradually been dropping. Propagation seems best on
17, 20, 40 and 30 meters; however there have been some good openings on 15
meters and brief openings on 10 meters.
Also some members reported that even when the bands have been open,
conditions seemed very noisy.
·
LIDXA member Dan,
W2NDP, who resides in Florida, recently went on a mini-DXpedition with a few
friends to Honeymoon Island (NA-034), which is off the west coast of Florida,
near the city of Tampa. Several club
members worked Dan on this island. This
DXpedition will be repeated in about six weeks.
·
Bernie, W3UR, will be operating from the UN station in New York City for
one day only, Friday January 30, from about 1400Z to 0200Z (Saturday),
depending upon Amtrak connections from Maryland! Bernie will be sharing the operating activities with his
daughter, KB3JIU, and super QSL manager, Steve, KU9C. QSLs go to the direct address of the UN station as indicated in
several databases.
·
Ed reported that station YI/KC0LEK, with operator, Abel, has been very
active in the morning around 21300 KHz and calling “CQ North America.”
·
Ed passed around a photo he downloaded from the Web showing the massive
full-size 75-meter five-element array of 7J4AAF. The photo showed someone walking across the antenna boom. The boom is 42 meters (about 138 feet)
across with the longest element 44.4 meters (about 146 feet) in length. The weight of the antenna alone is 1300 kg
(about 2600 lbs). The array sits on a
60-meter tower (around 200 feet) up.
Starting the business portion of tonight’s meeting
was the approval of the November 21, 2003 meeting minutes (there was no
official meeting in December–just the Holiday Party). These minutes were accepted as presented. In addition, the minutes were prepared in
advance by the club’s secretary, Ed, K2MFY, and sent out to the membership with
the club’s January meeting notice.
Thanks to the efforts of KE2LJ, Pat, the minutes appear in the LIDXA web
site at: http://www.qsl.net/lidxa.
Club treasurer, John, W2GW gave a Treasurer’s report. Present dues for club membership, in the amount of $25, are now due for the year 2004. Several members attending tonight’s meeting gave John their checks. Marty reminded all the members to forward their dues to John ASAP. A new membership list/e-mail address list would be issued shortly. Marty mentioned that since much of our previous expenses (especially those concerning the repeater) were now eliminated, it might be possible to reduce the annual dues for the year 2005. This item would be brought up at a later meeting.
The primary
business at tonight’s meeting was the firming up of our “DX Forum” presentation
at Sunday’s HRU 2004, which will be held at East Woods School in Oyster Bay,
Long Island, NY, on Sunday, January 18 at 9AM.
This year’s session is scheduled for 50 minutes, so the agenda of last
year’s presentation (which was planned for a 3-½ hour session), had to be
considerably pared down. Ed brought in
copies of last year’s agenda for review.
After
editing down the topics, it was felt that the following subjects should be
briefly addressed:
·
Overview of
DXing—What’s DX
·
DX Propagation
·
Operating
Techniques
·
ARRL DXCC
Program
·
DX Aids on the
Computer
NN2C, K2MFY,
W2FGD, and AG2A offered to these
presentations. Speaker assignments were
then made for the above topics.
Marty
suggested that the topics that were not included should still be presented to
the LIDXA membership at future meetings.
In this manner new members would benefit from the knowledge and
experience of other members.
The
business portion of the meeting then concluded at 9:15 PM.
There was not enough time to show the video on the 2000 DXpedition to Clipperton Island (FO0AAA), so it will be viewed at another meeting.
This meeting then concluded at around 9:30 PM after all the scheduled
business had finished. The next
regularly scheduled meeting for the LIDXA is on Friday, February 20, 2004. Marty hoped to see us all at Sunday’s HRU
2004, and reminded members to send their 2004 LIDXA dues to W2GW or bring it to
the next meeting.
______________________________________
Ed Whitman, K2MFY
LIDXA Secretary