Location: Town
of Oyster Ice Skating Center, Community Room 1, Bethpage,
N.Y.
John, W2GW, the LIDXA President, called to order the meeting
of March 16 at 8:30 PM. Members present included W2GW, K2MAU, W2ABK
and OM Bruce, W2FGD, K2MFY, KA2D, N2KA, W2PNJ, W2VZQ and XYL Marilyn. Guests included Phil, N2MUN; Pete, WB2OQQ; and Len, W2FX.
In terms of DX, specific activities were highlighted:
·
A major DXpedition
to the Kurdistan area in Northern Iraq is scheduled for early April. The callsign assigned is YI9PSE.
·
Ed, K2MFY
reported that XU7ACY from Cambodia has been active on 20m CW in the mornings around
9AM local time with a good signal.
Mongolian stations have been consistently heard in the evenings on 20m
after 9PM. Also there have been very
good 20m long path openings to Australia between 5–6PM local time.
·
ZK3OU and ZK3YA
will be starting a DXpedition from the Tokelau Islands in about one week.
·
It was reported
that the sunspots numbers have started to improve. On some occasions the SSN has been over 70
and the solar flux in the 80s. Sporadic
openings have been noted on 12 and 10 meters.
Good conditions are usually found daytime on 17 meters and 20 meters and
later on 30 meters and the lower bands.
The February 16 meeting was canceled due to the
inclement weather that day. Starting the
business portion of tonight’s meeting was the approval of the January 19,
2010 meeting
minutes. In addition, the January 2010 minutes
were prepared in advance by the club’s Secretary Ed, K2MFY, and sent out to the
membership with the February meeting notice.
Thanks to the efforts of KE2LJ, Pat, these minutes appear in the LIDXA
web site at: http://www.qsl.net/lidxa.
John, W2GW, LIDXA Treasurer, gave the Treasurer’s
report. John also reminded the
membership that the annual dues of $20 for the year 2010 is now required by all
members. Several members have not yet
paid their dues for the current year.
It was mentioned that the Netherland Antilles, consisting
of the islands of St. Maarten, Saba, and St. Eustatius (PJ5-8), may be working
out new governments and independence this Fall.
This dissolution may foster new country status for each of these islands.
Pete, WB2OQQ, spoke about VHF activity from a new
ham satellite just launched by China.
It was reported that LIDXA member Mike, N2YBB, is
completing the paperwork to become another DXCC card checker. Since Mike lives in Brooklyn, this will
enable city residents to have easy access to a DXCC card checker. John, W2GW, has been the DXCC card checker
for our NLI section for quite a number of years and welcomes the additional
support.
Ed remarked that direct QSLing of relatively rare DX
stations is now becoming cost prohibitive.
A number of stations do not belong to the local QSL bureau (or the
bureau does not exist) and the stations request at least $2 for return of their
QSLs direct to U.S. addresses. Also some
stations comment that their country does not accept IRCs. Some of these problems have been addressed by
Hal, K4HB, on his links “Foreign Postage Rates” at http://www.k4hb.com/postage.html and
http://www.k4hb.com/scheme.html.
John noted that according to the club’s constitution,
voting for officers must be done during the May meeting this year, and that a
provisional slate of candidates should be determined in the April meeting. He urged members to consider volunteering as
an officer or serve on the LIDXA Board of Directors for the 2010–2012 term.
Marv reminded the membership to check-in at the LIDXA
weekly nets on Sunday night at 9 PM local time on the Grumman Hauppauge
repeater at 145.330/144.730 MHz (with 136.5 Hz PL), to get the latest
information on club matters and events.
At
the conclusion of the business portion of tonight’s meeting Tom, KA2D, gave a PowerPoint presentation on the Yankee Clipper Contest Club (YCCC). The presentation opened up with an
introduction of the YCCC, its purpose and goals, and then a detailed
presentation “Why Contest?” This
overview discussed contesting techniques, awards, logging programs, station
automation, and “the fun in contesting.”
Detailed resources are available on the YCCC web site (http://www.yccc.org).
This meeting concluded at around 10:15 PM after all the scheduled
business and entertainment had finished.
The next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday April 20, 2010.
______________________________________
Ed Whitman, K2MFY
LIDXA Secretary