MINUTES
OF LIDXA INC. MEETING— September 19, 2003
Location:
Briarcliffe College, Bethpage, N.Y.
The LIDXA President, Marty, NN2C, called the meeting of September 19 to order at 8:15 PM. Members present (per sign-in on the blackboard) included K2MFY, NN2C, KE2LJ, W2FGD, AG2A, NX2F, N2FF, W2GW (and XYL), and AB2NT.
In terms of DX, specific activities were highlighted:
·
The ARRL ruled that the May DXpedition to the
“Democratic Republic of Timor Leste” counts as the previous “East Timor (UNTAET)”–just
a change of name. Thor, 4W3DX
(ex-4W1MM, 4W6MM, also TF3MM), who is stationed in Timor, is still presently
active, primarily on CW. Another active
operator is 4W3CW.
·
A DXpedition to Peter 1 Island (3YØ/P) is scheduled for the early part of
2004. This will be a high-power
DXpedition with an international team of experienced operators and multiple
stations, covering all HF bands with SSB, CW and RTTY modes. The team hopes to stay on the island for
three weeks.
·
Updates to your DXCC listings must be postmarked to the ARRL HQ, or
validated by a DXCC checker (local LIDXA members Emil, KD1F or Lenny, KB2HK),
before September 30 in order to make the 2004 DXCC Annual Listing. Presently there are 335 current entities on
the DXCC list, with 326 current required for the DXCC Honor Roll. There are 58 deleted entities.
·
Conditions on the HF
bands have continued to be very poor and disturbed. Besides the solar flux dropping as the sunspot cycle declines,
the A and K indices have remained high.
Propagation seems best on 17, 20, 40 and 30 meters.
Starting the business portion of tonight’s meeting
was the approval of the June 20, 2003 meeting minutes. These minutes were prepared in advance by
the club’s secretary, Ed, K2MFY, and sent out to the membership with the
September meeting notice. Thanks to the
efforts of KE2LJ, Pat, these minutes also appear (unapproved) in the LIDXA Web
site: http://www.qsl.net/lidxa.
Club treasurer, John, W2GW gave a Treasurer’s report. The only expenditure John noted was our annual donation to the ARRL DX Contest, as a sponsor of the High Score plaque–21 MHz SSB.
Pat gave the club a brief rundown on the repeater
situation at Jane’s Hill. The Melville
Fire Department has removed all antennas from the tower. It also appears that the club’s repeater
transceiver unit, recently removed from the shack for servicing, is
unsalvageable. It was recalled that
this unit was covered with rat droppings, spider webs, and other repulsive
debris. Grumman has kindly allowed the
club to use their Bethpage repeater (146.745
MHz) for our weekly Sunday night net use.
However, due to present maintenance on the
Plant 14 roof, the net has been temporarily moved to the Grumman
Hauppauge repeater on 145.330/144.730 MHz (with 136.5 Hz PL).
A discussion developed on Pat’s
summary of the repeater situation. Ed
commented that since the repeater hardware is inoperable, we should not pay for
the annual property insurance that is due at the end of the year. The club agreed with Ed’s suggestion. Also Marv recommended that, not only should
we keep our Sunday night nets on the Grumman Hauppauge repeater frequency, but
we should also leave the Sunday night net time at 9 PM Eastern time. For many years in the past we always move
the net time to 8 PM local time during the period of EST. Most of the members attending tonight’s
meeting agreed with Marv’s suggestions.
It was finally decided to poll the net attendees before finalizing this
decision. Eastern Standard Time goes
into affect on October 26.
John, W2GW, who is the recipient of the annual 2003
“N2DTW Award,” thanked all members for their support and confidence in his work
with the LIDXA.
LIDXA member Frank Fallon, N2FF, incumbent Hudson
Division Director, spoke briefly about the forthcoming Hudson Division election
for the ARRL for the Director position.
Ballots will be going out soon to Hudson Division members of the
ARRL. Frank is facing a challenge from
the former Director, Steve Mendelsohn, W2ML, of NJ. Frank described a brief overview of the election process up in
Headquarters. He then went on and
discussed his accomplishments with the League in the past six and a half years
for our Division, and his plans for the future.
Frank also discussed the
League’s position on the Broadband over Power Line (BPL) threat to the HF
bands. He urged all amateurs to review
the ARRL news on this issue at the ARRL Web site.
The new (final) release of the ARRL’s, “Logbook of
the World” (LoTW) has been launched as of September 15. Details and downloads can be found at http://www.arrl.org/lotw/.
Many of the club members mentioned how they utilize the DX spotting available with the telnet node at the W2GSB repeater. Marv requested that the minutes reflect appreciation to Tom, KA2D, and his work keeping the W2GSB node as a valuable asset to the local DX community.
Ed mentioned that he had noticed that somehow the LIDXA was omitted as an ARRL affiliated club in the latest online listing. Ed said he had always filled out the written forms and sent them to the League. Now that the process is online he said he would check the new procedure and submit the necessary online application.
The
business portion of the meeting then concluded at 9 PM.
A video was then shown on the January 1997 multi-national DXpedition to Heard Island. This expedition hosted scientific and amateur radio activities. The logistics of moving over 34 tons of equipment and 20 people to this island were truly amazing. The video highlighted the history of the island and its animal life besides the ham radio activities.
This meeting then concluded at around 9:55 PM after all the scheduled business and entertainment had finished. The next meeting of the LIDXA is scheduled October 16.
______________________________________
Ed Whitman, K2MFY
LIDXA Secretary