August 2022 Meeting Minutes
Snoqualmie Valley Radio Club
Monthly Meeting Minutes
August 4th, 2022
I. Call to Order:
The meeting was called to order at 6:16 p.m. at Duvall Fire Station 66.
Members in attendance were:
Tom (WA7TBP) – President, Kirt (K7KDW) – Vice President, Lindy – Treasurer, Rowland (K7RWB), Shawn (K7ATA), Ken(K7ECK), Paul (W7PFB), Mike (KJ7JNG), Ralph (KC7QXD), Bob (KI7RMO), Ed (AK7H).
II. Approval of Board Meeting Minutes
The meeting minutes from the meeting that occurred on July 7th 2022 were approved.
III. Treasury Report and Financials
Lindy presented the May 2022 financials to the members in attendance. Currently there is $8,152.32 in the treasury and SNOVARC has 34 paying members.
IV. Old Business
Myers Repeater – The Myers repeater continues to work extremely well. Rowland mentioned that the site owner, John, mentioned that the exterior equipment needs to be painted. Rowland said that there is no Wi-Fi connection in the repeater room. There was a suggestion made to assist the owner in obtaining equipment that would extend Wi-Fi into the repeater room so changes to the repeater room equipment can be made remotely. Everyone attending the meeting voted to move forward in finding a way to assist the owner of the property to extend the owner’s Wi-Fi signal strength to include the inside of the repeater room.
Cougar Mountain Repeater – The new repeater equipment is still in “gentle burn-in mode” and not on- the-air yet. There are some software issues with the wide band software that need to be resolved. Shawn mentioned he will reach out to Rich and get some more information on the status of the planned turn-up of the new equipment.
Carnation Repeater – The Carnation repeater has been removed from the Carnation City Hall and is currently up and working (with a smaller coverage footprint) from Paul’s home. Since moving out of the former repeater room, the relationship between Ana and the SNOVARC Club is all X’s and O’s!!! She agreed to allow the repeater to be placed in the WSP room in Carnation City Hall. A discussion took place regarding re-installing the repeater in a Gator Box when the repeater returns to City Hall within the WSP room. This way the repeater can serve as a Go-Box in the event of an emergency. Tom said that he will be looking for recommendations regarding if a Go-Box design for the re-installed Carnation repeater is the best way to go. There might be a problem when the repeater is installed in City Hall since one of the weather heads that was being used for running the antenna coax between the repeater and the antenna is now being used by City Hall to monitor construction on Main Street.
Carnation Equipment Room Clean-up – Paul informed everyone that all the non-working equipment that was removed from the Carnation City Hall is now being stored in Lake Joy Fire Station. Rowland will provide Paul with inventory stickers so Paul can place the stickers on the equipment and record on a spreadsheet the model, serial number, and any other information that is desired for tracking the equipment. He will start on the equipment at his house and then Lake Joy.
King County Badging – Rowland has started the King County re-badging process. He sent his first batch over to King County. He will only be focusing on the current SNOVARC (dues paying) membership. He has a list of 255 people with badges. SNOVARC currently has 34 members. Rowland will not submit a badge renewal for people who are not currently members of SNOVARC unless he is contacted and requested to do so.
Rookie Roundtable – Kirt reported that there has been a low number of people joining the net. KBARA has not attended and this has reduced the number of attendees. It was noted that KBARA could be busy with other pressing issues since there has been fires in Eastern Washington. Kirt cannot be net control next week; he is looking for someone to run the net in his absence.
Education and outreach – Rowland found that only 3 or 4 new hams from the Issaquah Club are interested in Elmer education, probably due to it being summer. He plans to call for an Ad-Hoc meeting to see who attends to gauge actual interest. The 2023 Tech class is up in the air for now until we know if there is a virus surge or not.
Marketing – Nothing new to report. On-hold until the end of summer.
Regional Net – Rowland reported that he really has not received much traction getting any significant interest in this type of net. On-hold until the end of summer.
Mini Drill – The 7/21 10M mini-drill was very interesting. It was discovered that antenna polarization is a huge factor between the sender and receiver. Lesson learned was that if you are trying to make contact with someone on a vertical or horizontal antenna, you should be using the same polarization as the person(s) you are attempting to contact. The vertical polarization was a better choice for Ken.
V. New Business
Prizes will be awarded to SNOVARC membership who join the meeting by showing up at the Duvall Fire Station for scheduled meetings. Tonight’s winner is…Paul! Paul won a new 2M antenna. Congratulations Paul.
There will be a mini-drill on 8/18 – more details to follow at a later date.
The FCC has switched over to a new platform in the CORES system and it is now very cumbersome and time consuming to renew your license.
Ed informed the attendees that 6M sideband is very useful and can be used if you have equipment that can utilize sideband frequencies. Tom mentioned that he and his family were at Hood Canal and could pick-up a lot of traffic on 2M sideband and that a Tuesday night net exists for 2M sideband on 144.24 if anyone is interested.
The NW Citizen Corps EXPO will be September 17-18 in Yakima and free this year if anyone is interested.
September 12th CERT Classes will begin at the Carnation Fire Station 6-9PM Monday nights (7 weeks plus a final).
The Carnation Evacuation Drill is taking place on October 1st.
The National Night Out had a lot of participation. Helicopters, bomb robots and Eastside Fire were there and the crowd really enjoyed the night out event.
Kathy will be giving an on-line shelter class on August 9th – She is on Facebook if you are interested.
Shawn proposed that we have a club B-B-Q on August 27TH and invite the Issaquah Club to attend. Possible location: At the park next to the PD.
Paul’s 220 repeater is back on-the-air with a new power amp module.
Tonight’s Elmer session will be a presentation by Ken (K7ECK). Ken will be presenting an overview on EchoLink and have a Q&A session on this topic.Meeting adjourned at 7:00 p.m.
