MINUTES OF LIDXA INC. MEETING— March 19, 2004

Location: Briarcliffe College, Bethpage, N.Y.

The LIDXA Vice President, Pat, KE2LJ, called the meeting of March 19 to order at 8:08 PM. Members present (per sign-in on the blackboard) included K2MFY, KE2LJ, W2FGD, KD1F, N2KA, AB2NT, NX2F, WA2RB, AG2A, W2GW and XYL KC2MAU. The club’s President, Marty, NN2C, was delayed and arrived at the school around 8:30 PM. Marty then took over the leadership of tonight’s meeting.

OLD BUSINESS

In terms of DX, specific activities were highlighted:

• A DXpedition to Revilla Gigedo as XF4IH has been very active. Several members have reported at least three stations on the air simultaneously on different bands.
• A station signing VKØDX was recently heard on the low end of 20-meter CW. This station is operating on an Australian base in the Antarctic, not on Heard Island.
• Several members have just reported that the major DXpedition to Rodrigues Island, as 3B9C, has just arrived on the island and become operational.. This DXpedition, which is mainly sponsored by the Five Stars DX Association (FSDXA), also ran the very successful DXpedition to the Comoros in 2001 (as D68C). A total of about two-dozen operators are on this trip. All bands and modes are expected to be activated.
• A group of Russian amateurs have arrived on Franz Josef Land, and will operate this week’s Russian contest as R1FJ. They expected to stay on this island for about one week.

Starting the business portion of tonight’s meeting was the approval of the February 20 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 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. Presently John mentioned that 18 members had paid their dues. New member Frank, WA2AAW attended tonight’s meeting and was warmly welcomed into the club by the membership.

NEW BUSINESS

Pat opened the floor to a discussion on the rumors that the Dayton HamVention would be eventually leaving the Hara arena complex for an unknown convention site. Pat indicated that besides the enormous responsibilities incurred in this convention, he felt that Dayton Amateur Radio Association organizers might be getting a little tired of hosting this HamVention after 40 years in the Hara arena.. At least six to eight LIDXA members have made plans to attend the convention this year.

It was also reported that the FCC commissioners unanimously approved 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. BPL has shown to cause potential interference on Amateur bands between 2.0 and 60 MHz. This NPRM would require that BPL providers to apply adaptive interference mitigation techniques if their systems cause interference. A discussion ensued on the politics involved in the FCC’s decision that far over-rode the technical problems detailed by the ARRL.

With the business portion of this meeting brought to a conclusion at 8:50 PM, a video was then shown on the March 2000 multi-national DXpedition to Clipperton Island as FOØAAA. This excellent video detailed the history of this remote island up to the present time. It also highlighted the multitude of orange crabs that kept the DXpedition members very busy! In their nine days of operation the team amassed over 75,000 QSOs.

This meeting then concluded at around 9:50 PM after all the scheduled business had finished. The next regularly scheduled meeting for the LIDXA is on Friday, April 16, 2004.

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Ed Whitman, K2MFY

LIDXA Secretary