Board Meetings


Minutes of Board Meeting
Date: 02/14/2001


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Minutes of the Radioklub Nokia Board Meeting - February 2001

Meeting called to order on 2/14/01 at 9:00 AM at NH4 by our president, Esa Korhonen.
The following board members were present: Bob Alexander, Mike Sundstrom, Esa Korhonen, Colin Buckup, and Andrew Kapushoc.

Esa informed that Cary Carender, our station trustee, received the vanity-call license for our club station. We received our first choice from the proposed list. Official call sign for Radioklub Nokia in Irving is now NK5A. It's already published on QRZ.com as well.

Esa updated the Board on the other Nokia club stations around the world.
There are a total of 5 stations in Finland and one in San Diego.
In Finland we have: OH2AV in Espoo; OH1N and OH0N in Salo; OH8AV in Oulu; OH6AAH in Aanekoski and OH3AV in Tampere. The San Diego call sign is unknown.
These stations were built over the years with funds coming from Nokia. To get support these clubs prepared a budget with action plans and presented it to the respective HR-Recreational Activities group within the company.

In order for our Radioklub to set up a station with help from Nokia, it was decided that the following steps need to be taken:
1- Update the list of our members, so that we can show Nokia how many people are interested in having a ham station. The point is that these funds come from the same overall budget that supports groups like Nokia soccer teams, runner teams, bikers, chess players, etc.
2- Prepare a budget based on the proposal presented earlier to the Board. This proposal will be refined to reflect the essentials, the would-be-nice-to-have and the dream list.
3- Contact the facilities group to start the search for a physical space for the station. This should be much easier now that we officially exist as a group and have a call sign assigned. Worst-case scenario (No station on Nokia Campus allowed) could be addressed with a remote operated one.
4- Contact HR with the results from the before mentioned activities and ask for support.

Since the old e-mail reflector was deactivated, it's been hard for all the members to share mails and news. Colin Buckup was assigned to set up a new e-mail reflector, similar to the old e-groups reflector. Note: e-groups meanwhile has merged with Yahoo, now the service runs under Yahoo administration, this service is still free. Esa will forward the existing members list so that the new e-group can be started. Members should expect an invitation to (re) join the list shortly.

Discussing the station priorities, two topics came up:
1- What's the real priority for our station, based on the survey done last year? It appears to be HF operation, with VHF FM coming second. One idea is to repeat a short survey using the new reflector to see if this holds true. Results will be presented next month.
2- Antennas: What can we use as antenna in the Irving Campus, since there are severe City Regulation restrictions in the Las Colinas area. One idea is using the flagpoles as tuned verticals. This depends where we will get our "shack".

Logo for the Radioklub Nokia:
We don't have a logo for our club yet. The proposal was made to have an internal (member only) contest to create our logo. All members are welcome to contribute. Guidelines for the logo will be addressed shortly.

Invitation:
Bob Alexander invited all members of the Radioklub Nokia to join the Lone Star DX Association for their quarterly meeting. That group is going to have a feature presentation by K5AB addressing the K5K Kingman Reef 2000 DX-pedition. The meeting will be on March 10th (Saturday) from 11:30 AM until 2:00 PM at the Bodacious BBQ in Arlington (on Division Street, west of 360).

HamCom:
Bob Alexander informed that this year's HamCom is going to have an excellent DX presentation. The LSDXA, together with other DX groups in the DFW area, is inviting, amongst others, OH2BH Martti Laine, ON4UN, K5AB, etc. These people accepted to come to HamCom instead of Dayton. This is a major victory for the North Texas hams. Bob is asking all members to help funding these efforts. He will address this later with all members.

Financials:
So far the club has had neither income nor expenses.

Meeting was adjourned at 10:15 AM. Minutes by Colin Buckup.

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Updated by N5GG on 8/23/01