MINUTES
OF LIDXA INC. MEETING— March 21, 2003
Location:
Briarcliffe College, Bethpage, N.Y.
The LIDXA President, Marty, NN2C, called the meeting of March 21 to order at 8:08 PM. Members present (per sign-in on the blackboard) included K2MFY, W2GW (and XYL), NN2C, KE2LJ, KD1F, N2QW, W2FGD, AG2A, AB2NT, KG2T, N2FF, N2KA, and W2VZQ. After an absence of a few years, Marty welcomed back Joe, KG2T to tonight’s meeting.
At
the outset of tonight’s meeting Frank, N2FF, LIDXA member and ARRL Hudson
Division Director, presented a short public relations video “Amateur Radio
Today,” which was narrated by the renowned newsman, Walter Cronkite, KB2GSD.
In terms of DX, specific activities were highlighted:
·
A German group in the
Sudan operating with the callsign, STØRY, has been very active on the
bands. QSL to DL5NAM.
·
The German couple of
DL7IO (OM) and DL7IQ (XYL), plan to be visiting a number of Central American
countries in the next few weeks. First
stop will be El Salvador, where they will use the callsign HU1M. Then they will travel to Honduras and
Guatemala. QSL all activities to DK7AO.
·
A group of amateurs
from The Netherlands will be activating the Faeroe Islands (OY) shortly. The QSL manager for all contacts is PA5ET.
Starting the business portion of tonight’s meeting
was the approval of the February 21, 2003 meeting minutes. These minutes were accepted as
presented. In addition, these minutes
were prepared in advance by the club’s secretary, Ed, K2MFY, and sent out to
the membership with the March meeting notice.
In addition to Ed’s e-mail mailing of these minutes to the members,
thanks to the efforts of KE2LJ, Pat, they also appear (unapproved) in the LIDXA
web site: 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 2003. A few 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, with members’ phone numbers, e-mail and home addresses, was completed through the efforts of W2GW and K2MFY. This list was e-mailed to all paid-up members and available for distribution at tonight’s meeting. In future mailings only members on this list would be recipients of the monthly e-mail meeting notices/minutes. For the few members who do not have e-mail addresses, John said he would mail out the monthly information.
As a result of a suggestion at the February meeting, Pat was requested to provide a blank LIDXA membership application on the LIDXA web site. In this manner, prospective members could download the form and submit it with their check at a meeting, or by mail to W2GW.
Marty commented that he had not heard anything new
on the status of Millennium Tower
Corporation’s application for a tower construction permit with the Town of
Babylon. In the meantime the LIDXA has
use of the Grumman repeater for its Sunday night at 9PM local time. This frequency is normally 146.745 MHz,
however due to the cable maintenance required for the Bethpage repeater, the
net has been temporarily moved to the Grumman Hauppauge repeater on
145.333/144.730 MHz (with 136.5 Hz PL).
Frank
spoke about the reintroduction of tower bills, Assembly A2662 and Senate S63
into the NYS calendar in late January.
Both bills have the same wording as last years’ versions, and most of
the same sponsors. Frank urged all
amateurs to write their local assemblyman and senator regarding passage of
these important bills this time around.
Complete details and sample letters can be found at http://www.hudson.arrl.org/. Frank also mentioned that S63–was reported
out of the Senate Local Government Committee, and is now on the Senate calendar
for a vote.
On
a final note, Frank mentioned the ARRL is currently doing beta testing on their
new Log Book of the World (LOTW). He
expects that there will be a limited release shortly. The ARRL is very concerned about security of this format.
Ed commented that the
popular Web site for electronic or “e-QSLs,” http://www.eqsl.cc/qslcard/, has
recently updated their format. In order
to access incoming QSL card data, you must first input your log data (QSO date,
band, mode, and time within ± a few minutes). Once this data
is compared favorably to the incoming e-QSL, only then can this card be
viewed. This procedure is to further
authenticate the process of electronic QSLing and provide a new level of
security. Ed mentioned that after the
recent ARRL DX Contest, he uploaded and “sent out” almost 1000 e-QSLs in about
one minute!
Ed showed a number of JT QSLs that he had received directly from JT1BG in Mongolia. Back in October 2002, Ed read that Ken, K4ZW, who had visited Mongolian amateurs, volunteered to be a collection point for outgoing USA cards. All Ken requested was a SAE and a “green stamp” (or new style IRC) per callsign. Ken then boxed up the cards and shipped them registered mail to JT1BG in Mongolia. Once the cards got to Mongolia it was up to the JT amateurs to distribute and reply.
At least six members of the LIDXA will be attending the annual HamVention at Dayton this year over the May 16th weekend. Pat urged any LIDXA member who would be attending the HamVention, to obtain tickets to the DX banquet dinner in advance so that we could all be sitting together. In this regards, it was decided that the LIDXA meeting in May would be postponed one week to May 23, so that attendees could report on the HamVention.
Several members mentioned that the April meeting on the 18th would fall out on Good Friday; in addition it is the second night of Passover. As per the LIDXA Constitution, the April meeting would be postponed one week to April 25. Members would be reminded of this in the April meeting notice.
The
business portion of the meeting then concluded at 9:00 PM.
At
this time, a video was shown on the May 2000 DXpedition to the Kingdom of Bhutan
by an international team headed up by Glenn, WØGJ. This excellent video told how this Dxpedition was put together in
two weeks by WØGJ. The narration,
interviews and photography gave us great insight into the problems of a big
DXpedition, both from the logistics and operational point of view. Besides the DX operation, the video stressed
the beauty, landscape, and culture of this remote corner of the world.
This meeting concluded at around 10:00 PM after all the scheduled business and entertainment had finished. Marty wished the membership a good holiday, and to remember that the next meeting would be held on the fourth Friday in April, the 25th of the month.
______________________________________
Ed Whitman, K2MFY
LIDXA Secretary