MINUTES OF LIDXA INC. MEETING—June 15, 2001

Location: Polytechnic University, Farmingdale, N.Y.

The LIDXA President, Marty, NN2C, called the meeting of June 15 to order at 8:18 PM. Members present (per sign-in on the blackboard) included K2MFY, KE2LJ, NN2C, N2JE (and XYL), N2DXJ (and XYL), N2TU, W2VZQ, W2FGD, and N2QW.

At the outset, Marty mentioned that Dell, XYL of member Marty, KA2NRR, was in a car accident but was recovering very well. Marv, W2FGD, said he would send her a get well card from the club. The membership wished Dell a speedy recovery.

OLD BUSINESS

In terms of DX, specific activities mentioned:

• A YL station, VP6YL, from Pitcairn Island has been frequenting 15 meter SSB (approximately 21.340 kHz) at 0100Z. The operator is Betty Christian, wife of Tom Christian, VP6TC, who is a descendant of the original Pitcairn Island settler, Fletcher Christian.
• Two stations from Somalia, T5W and T5X have been very active on all bands. QSL to DL1QW and DJ6SI, respectively.
• Thor, 4W6MM, has been heard operating a club station, 4W6ET, in East Timor. He is an avid CW operator and can be found on the low end of 20 meters.
• Several members reported that there have been good openings in the evenings to Asia on 20 and 15 meters. In addition, there have been excellent paths open to all parts of the world on 6 meters.
• Several stations will be shortly operating from Crete and other islands off the Greek coast.
• The All-Asian DX contest, CW mode, will be held this weekend. The exchange is RST report followed by your age.

Starting the business portion of tonight's meeting was the approval of the May 25 meeting minutes. These minutes were prepared by the club's secretary, Ed, K2MFY, and sent out to the membership with the club's May meeting notice. In addition, thanks to the efforts of Pat, these minutes also appear in the LIDXA web site: http://www.qsl.net/lidxa.

Marty commented on the status of Millennium Tower Corporation’s application for a tower construction permit with the Town of Babylon. He had heard that the company would file some necessary papers with the Town in July. The Town's decision should be determined within 45–60 days. With this schedule, the earliest the club would be able to have an antenna erected on the tower would be in the October/November timeframe.

Marty also said that Millennium would be absorbing the cost for repeater electricity use. Pat was requested to estimate the physical room needed for the repeater hardware resident at the base of the tower. The club must also decide on the repeater antenna.

In the meantime, the LIDXA has use of the Grumman repeater, on 146.745 MHz.

NEW BUSINESS

Marty gave an overview of the 2001 Dayton HamVention. The HamVention was very well attended, probably with about 28,000 attendees and hundreds of exhibitors. He reported on some of the forums and the DX dinner. As usual the DX dinner was very long and drawn out. Guest speaker was 3YØC, who recently returned from a tour of duty down in Bouvet Island.

At the HamVention, Marty did speak with representatives from the QSL printing services of Octavia Company, Ltd., located in Maykop, Russia. He was told that his March order for QSLs were in the mail. Shortly afterwards, Marty did receive his cards and was very pleased with his multi-colored QSL cards. This company has a very detailed Web site at www.octavia.com/qslprint.htm.

Marty then described his unfortunate accident at Dayton, where he fell in the outdoor flea market and received a number of facial cuts.

It was reported that vandals had recently gotten into the Melville Fire Department's site at Jane's Hill in Huntington. Since officials at the Fire Department had not contacted the LIDXA, it was assumed that no one had broken into the facility that currently houses the club's repeater equipment.

Marty announced that, as per the discussion during the May meeting, the Sunday night nets would now have a new format. The net attendees would be polled at check-in time as to whether they have any "traffic" for the net. Those that do have input would subsequently be polled in a round-table fashion so that all comments could be made in a reasonable fashion. This traffic might include such topics as present DX activities, habits of DXpeditions, propagation considerations, etc. These inputs should mainly consist of relevant DX topics. All inputs to the net would be informal, but should be related to the subject that Marv, the net control station, announces to all check-ins.

It was reported that Assembly Bill A-1565, entitled "Amateur Radio Preemption," was currently tied up in the NYS Legislation. This bill will help radio amateurs erect legal antennas and antenna support structures in New York, and assist their neighbors in time of communications emergencies. It was not sure how long this bill would be held in legislation. Hopefully Frank, N2FF, LIDXA member and our ARRL Hudson Division Director, would be able to update the status of this bill in the September meeting.

This concluded the business portion of tonight's meeting. Due to the late time it was decided not to show the scheduled video on the Kingman Reef, K5K, DXpedition.

This meeting concluded at around 9:20 PM after all the scheduled business had finished. Marty wished the membership a good summer and indicated that the next meeting would be held on September 21.

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Ed Whitman, K2MFY

LIDXA Secretary