MINUTES
OF LIDXA INC. MEETING— February 20, 2004
Location: Briarcliffe College, Bethpage, N.Y.
This meeting of the LIDXA was called to order at 8:10 PM, by the LIDXA
Secretary Ed, K2MFY. The LIDXA
President, Marty, NN2C, was unable to attend this meeting because of an
illness, and the Vice President, Pat, KE2LJ, was out of town.
Members present (per sign-in on the blackboard) included K2MFY, W2GW
and XYL Louise, KC2MAU, W2FGD, WA2RB, AB2NT, AG2A, KD1F, and guest Pete, NA2P.
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.
·
This weekend is the annual ARRL International DX Contest–CW
mode. A number of special contest
stations will be active; namely, C6AWS, EA8/ON5UM, J7A, JT1FDD, LU5FF, FS5UQ,
TI5N, V26DX, and VK2FRC just to mention a few.
·
A large organized DXpedition to
Rodrigues Island as 3B9C is planned for mid-March. They expect to have 17 operators and man several stations on the
air continuously. Modes used will be
SSB, CW, RTTY and PSK.
Starting
the business portion of tonight’s meeting was the approval of the January 16,
2004 meeting minutes. 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 February 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. Presently John mentioned that 15 members had
paid their dues. John also indicated
that two new members had just joined the club, Rich WA2RB, and Frank,
WA2AAW. Rich attended tonight’s meeting
and was warmly welcomed into the club by the membership.
W2GW mentioned that he just received a bill
for $67 from the ARRL for the club to sponsor, once again, a plaque for the
High Score, (World)-21 MHz-SSB in the ARRL DX Contest. The club has been sponsoring this award for
many years. Last year’s winner was
P4ØA. The club unanimously approved
that John send a check out to the League.
Ed urged the membership to read an excellent
editorial piece that appeared in this month’s issue of the “Hudson Division
Beacon,” written by Frank, N2FF, Hudson Division Director and LIDXA
member. Frank discussed the new ARRL
restructuring proposal regarding the elimination/reducing of the code
requirements. In his discussion, Frank
recalled his early days of ham radio and the struggles the he (and most of us!)
had in learning the code and upgrading to a higher license class. Frank concluded with the notion that “ …the
ARRL proposal, while not perfect and certainly not pleasing to all our members,
is a very good compromise on all the complicated issues involved and has the
greatest chance of gaining support of most hams….”
It was also reported that the FCC released its Notice of
Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) on Broadband over Power Line (BPL) systems. ARRL officials expressed disappointment
over this eminent threat to the Amateur Radio services.
A note was made that NJDXA member W2BXA, Ben Stevenson, recently
celebrated his 90th birthday.
Ben is tied with K6ZO, Ed Hawkins, who also will turn 90 years old, as
the two living amateurs with the highest total DXCC countries—391. The most possible is 393 (335 current and 58
deleted).
Ed noted that the ITU has just approved a new character for CW. The now-familiar “@” or “at” symbol, will be expressed as · – – · – · , or “AC” run together.
A discussion ensued on the various local
packet and Telnet clusters. It was
mentioned that VE7CC has a good site that provides an interface to various
clusters, and addresses the different command structures. This site can be accessed at http://www.ve7cc.net.
The business portion of the
meeting then concluded at 8:50 PM.
Ed had brought to tonight’s meeting a home
video that was taken back in September 1995.
This video was a step-by-step demonstration of the assembly of his
Force12, 7-element beam antenna (model C-3), removal of his old TA-33 jr.,
3-element beam on top of his 35-foot tower, and then the final mounting of the
C-3 on his tower by LIDXA club members.
In between the business and entertainment
portion of this meeting, DXCC QSL checker, Emil, KD1F, was busy checking the
QSLs of several attendees to the meeting.
This meeting then
concluded at around 9:30 PM, after all the scheduled business and entertainment
had finished. The next regularly
scheduled meeting for the LIDXA is on Friday, March 19, 2004. Ed said Marty would be back for this meeting
and reminded members to send their 2004 LIDXA dues to W2GW or bring it to the
next meeting.
______________________________________
Ed
Whitman, K2MFY
LIDXA
Secretary