May 2026 Meeting Minutes
Snoqualmie Valley Radio Club
Monthly Business Meeting Minutes
May 5th, 2026
I. Call to Order:
The meeting was called to order by Tom at 7:05 pm on Zoom.
Members in attendance were:
Tom (WA7TBP) – President, Kirt (K7KDW) – Vice President, Lindy (KG7IFA) – Treasurer, Mike (KJ7JNG) – Secretary, Ken (W7ECK), Rowland (K7RWB), Konstantin (KK7KO), Bob Otis (KI7RMO), Larry (AF7RW)
II. Approval of Board Meeting Minutes
The meeting minutes from the meeting that occurred on April 7th, 2026, were approved. Tom made the motion to approve the minutes. Mike seconded the motion. All members voted to approve the minutes. Motion passed.
III. Treasury Report and Financials
The SnoVARC bank balance as of 5/04/2026 was $7,175. Current membership total for 2026 climbed to 43, including 11 new members. The roster is posted on groups.io. We will be dropping off prior members from the 2026 roster who didn’t join in 2025 and haven’t joined by today for 2026. The updated member roster will be posted after this meeting. Tom made the motion to approve Lindy’s Treasurer’s report. Mike seconded the motion and all members approved. Motion passed.
IV. Committee and Task Force Reports
Repeater Task Force:
Cougar Mountain Repeater – Tom has been hearing cross talk on the repeater. Ken thinks it might be two radio operators who chose to speak on the TX frequency of the repeater.
Myers Repeater – Ken is monitoring and making changes to the controller to balance the audio between the two linked repeaters. (Cougar and Myers). Some members have tried to join over IRLP and had some difficulty. The problem was the length of the “tail” on the distant repeater in California that needs to be removed to work properly on IRLP.
Carnation Repeater – The Carnation repeater is being tested at Paul’s house. Tom and Paul found some high loss coax and replaced the suspect coax feed line The coverage was improved only slightly. The new location of the Carnation repeater provides a smaller RF footprint than what was provided when the repeater was located at Carnation City Hall. Paul and Tom would like to evaluate another antenna location at Paul’s house. To do this test, a telescoping mast will have to be used. Paul has an antenna he would like to try during this test. A date for testing will be arranged later.
ECHOLINK, ALLSTAR and IRLP – The club is fortunate to be allowed to work through the Texas reflector maintained by Fred (W5MGM). Fred provides this service to SNOVARC free of charge.
Emergency Planning and Mobilization:
EYEWARN – Bob Otis and Rowland had a training session with perspective GMRS radio users. About 25 people showed up for the training. Attendees broke off into teams both inside the building as well as outside the building. Bob feels that the training went well. The GMRS repeater to be used is still being built. The permanent location of the repeater has still not been decided. The GMRS repeater will be set to 462.725 with a +5 MHz shift and a tone of 203.5 Hz.
KC Emergency Badges – Rowland has a list of SNOVARC members that shows when the KC Emergency badge is expiring. Jason from King County has been providing badges to SNOVARC members at Rowland’s request.
V. Old Business – None
VI. New Business
Tom would like to see more people attending the SNOVARC business meeting. Mike has the action item to speak to the SNOVARC members in the Trilogy and ask them to join the monthly meeting.
Valley Camp Field Day – Call sign for Field Day will be WA7VC. SNOVARC and Issaquah will take the lead during the event. Fire Corps, SEACAST (Snoqualmie ARES team) and North Bend ARES team will be invited. A GMRS exercise is planned as well.
Rowland will be hosting class on how to build an antenna at Fire Station 166 on Thursday, 5/7.
Rowland and Luke from the City of Duvall, taught the Stop the Bleed class that was held recently. Approximately 15 to 18 people attended. The class was very informative.
Reminder: August 4th is National Night Out. People will meet at the Tolt Commerce Building. More details will be released later.
Meeting adjourned at 8:08pm
