The members met at the Bellevue Senior Center, with 6 members and one visitor. The meeting began at 7:05 PM with the Pledge of Allegiance.

Attending were members Van Kichline KD7QIT, Charles Beckmeier W7CEB, Ron Verschuyl K7AAE, Dick Schwanke W9HXM, Edna Rideout KA7HNH, and Doug Bell KD7KKR, plus one visitor, Robert Trigo, who hopes to become licenced by Thanksgiving.

Van began the meeting with a proposal to suspend Robert's Rules of Order for PARS general meetings. "Robert's Rules are great when you have a large group, ... but this is a small meeting and I don't think we need Robert's Rules. If anybody thinks we do, contact me and we'll reinstitute them immediately."

Moved, Seconded and Carried to suspend Robert's Rules of Order until such time as we decide we need it.

Board of Directors Report by Van: "Our 440MHz repeater was disassembled [by the company that was hosting it] about 5 months ago - we have a controller board and crystals but no tranceiver [or antenna]. We've been exploring a couple of ways of getting our repeater back up on the air. One is working with John AA7UJ to deploy it at Evergreen Hospital. If we do that we'd be sharing it with emergency medical services, a good cause. But actually nothing much has happened on that front.

"Another way to go is possibly just setting it up in my house. It's at a pretty good elevation, blocked a little bit to the west. The antenna wouldn't be on a high tower, so there would be less coverage, but the advantage would be that we could hook it up to high speed internet and to telephone lines, we could run computers right there interfacing with it. We would have immediate access to it, whereas at the hospital it's going to be locked in the equipment room, and if we want to adjust something we're going to have to get on the adjenda for a committee meeting to see if they'll let us in the room, or something like that. The other advantage of setting up our own repeater is we get to learn about repeaters.

"We're considering both options, so if you have any strong feelings either way be sure and let me know.

"The other thing we talked about was setting some goals for the club: three members of our club making a satellite QSO before next September; get our repeater operational within this year at one location or the other; get all of our members above tech class.

I wanted to ask if anybody had any suggestions for additional goals. It could be interacting with the community somehow; it could be a goal for something to accomplish at Field Day, anything like that. If something somes to mind you could send me email or something."

Robert works at T-Mobile, and they are working with EARS and trying to organize a ham radio group within T-Mobile and participate in EARS and RACES. Because of their location, a big building in Factoria, they've been talking with EARS about putting an antenna up on their building. That particular area is currently a blind spot. They have about 7 hams and one wannabe, trying to start a club. They would like some help.

Dick and Van explained what a repeater is for Robert.

Charles described talking to Armano N7VIQ from a computer at his friend's house in Nevada via the Internet using Echolink through the K7NWS repeater. Ron talked about the similarities and differences between Echolink and IRLP. Doug talked about the two modes of Echolink, and how the K7NWS Echolink node can't be accessed from a radio, only from the Internet.

Dick showed off his homebrew temporary antenna mount for his apartment, made of a telescoping fishing pole ($20 + $5 S&H), a paint pole, a flag pole mount, and a wedge of wood that fits into his sliding window. When assembled, this will be 34' above the ground and he will suspend a 20 m dipole and/or a loaded 40 m dipole from it. He also wants to design a loaded 80 m dipole for 34'. Dick also showed a dipole made with 300 ohm twinlead, center fed with a stiffener made from a plastic clothes hanger, straightened out with an elecric stove. He also described a string sold by Home Depot for bricklayers, which he will use to pull the antenna up to the mount.

Ron talked about the Winlink system, hams and homeland security.

Van talked about listening to the news on shortwave.

Robert talked about cellphones and ham radio during emergencies.

We broke for coffee and cookies at 7:54 PM.

Van gave an interesting report on the history of amateur satellites. Doug showed his 8 element 440 MHz handheld quad Yagi and talked about his efforts and some information on how to contact satellites with handheld tranceivers and antennas.

Dick talked about Greg Condon, an elementary school teacher who generates about 15 new hams a year.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:05 PM.

Respectfully Submitted -
Doug Bell, KD7KKR
PARS Secretary