Sept 5, 2001 Meeting Minutes

Here are the minutes from tonight's meeting:

Pizza arrived at 5:45 so we ate, held a short business meeting and worked on some equipment. Eight members attended including four new members. Messages (voice & email) were received from eleven other members and interested students indicating they will be active this semester but could not attend the meeting. Hope to see you all soon!

Congratulations to our new officers, President Jon Caputo N2SZL and Treasurer Mike Nicolls KC2HUL. Vice President and Secretary remain open; let Jon or Mike know if you would like to serve in one of those positions. We're a great club for learning the ropes of officialdom!

Topics of greatest interest to those in attendence:

We are progressing rapidly on all these grounds, as follows:

- Antenna raising party for the satellite station will be held Tues Sept 11 at 5:30 in the club shack and on the roof.

- Parts are ordered to complete the Force12 HF beam project. Natan W6XR will come help us tune it and John Hill KB2MTI will officiate at the raising of the antenna. These are both expert-plus'es in their respective fields so do come learn from them when the time comes.

- N2VR passed Morse code info around on the mailing list previously. We will do a Morse code segment on the Monday night net, more below.

- Several of us want to regain our category's crown in the ARRL Sweepstakes SSB contest! We will start training for contesting soon, learning how to use the logging programs, what the different rules mean and so forth. Once the Force12 antenna is up we can actively start participating in contests.

- There is great interest in the Monday Night Net. Start time will be 9PM local on the club repeater, 146.610- . N2VR ran the net on Monday Sept 3 for practice. The net is basically an informal club meeting -- we will have announcements of local interest (local tests being offered etc), discuss club projects, toss around ideas, and at the end do 10 minutes of Morse code in one of the two test formats. Some VEs give the 5 wpm exam at "true speed", while the ARRL VEs are required to give the code test at a rate of 15 wpm Farnsworth. N2VR will give examples of each on the net, and concentrate on the one you would need to take the next local test. The hope is that everyone will run the net at least once a semester to gain experience in this critical radio skill. It's fun, and should you ever get involved in emergency operations you'll fit right in.

I (N2VR) will be monitoring our repeater 146.610- as much as possible. If you are listening, please "sign in" with your call every 15 minutes or so to let others know you're there. For example, I usually sign in by transmitting "N2VR monitoring six-ten". If you'd like to try out your radio just give me a call. Hope to meet you there!

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