February 2025 Meeting Minutes
Snoqualmie Valley Radio Club
Monthly Meeting Minutes
February 4th, 2025
I. Call to Order:
The meeting was called to order by Tom at 7:00 pm on Zoom.
Members in attendance were:
Tom (WA7TBP), Kirt (K7KDW) – Vice President, Lindy (KG7IFA) Treasurer, Mike (KJ7JNG) – Secretary, Ken (W7ECK), Colin (W2COL), Rowland (K7RWB), Henry (AI7WN), Larry (AF7RW), Bob (KI7RMO)
II. Approval of Board Meeting Minutes
The meeting minutes from the meeting that occurred on January 7th, 2025 were approved.
III. Treasury Report and Financials
As of 2/04/25 there is $7,588 in the treasury. Revenue collected from member dues was $210 and we currently have 20 members.
IV. Committee and Task Force Reports.
Repeater Task Force:
Cougar Mountain Repeater – Replacement repeater is still under test at Tom’s (WA7TBP) home. The new repeater and controller are working flawlessly. Ken, (W7ECK), designed and built a relay switch that will allow a remote reset of the controller at Cougar Mountain. The relay was installed in the power distribution system of the repeater at the Cougar site. Ken, (W7ECK), traveled to Tom’s house and copied the software from the new Cougar repeater controller as a baseline file. He then loaded the existing scripts and menus into the new controller that will be installed at the Cougar site. Ken discovered some logic issues in the software the affects the Carnation controller. This is being investigated.
Myers Repeater – Operating well. The club is planning to link Cougar and Myers together over IRLP. Mike (KJ7JNG) informed the club that the Trilogy Amateur Radio Club (TARC) would volunteer personnel to assist with the installation of IRLP into Myers and that the TARC members would fund the cost of the IRLP equipment. TARC would like to use the Myers repeater for their Saturday morning net and be able to include those members (via ECHOLINK) who leave the PNW area during the winter months.
Carnation Repeater – Currently residing in the go box at Carnation City Hall and will be relocated to Chuck and Lindy’s home. Once the repeater is placed on Lindy’s home, club members will be needed to perform coverage tests.
Emergency Planning and Mobilization:
EYEWARN – Rowland (K7RWB) has been working closely with Clark County picking up useful information so the club can create a SNOVARC EYWARN plan. Rowland obtained permission to use the Clark County EYEWARN presentation and take out whatever is useful for the SNOVARC EYEWARN plan to create a presentation for ham radio operators not only in the Snoqualmie River/Duvall/Carnation area, but in all parts of King County.
Education and Community Outreach:
Thursday Night Roundtable/Ham Development – The Roundtable Net has changed into a “check-in” Net since many of the Hams that do check-in are seasoned ham radio operators. The Roundtable Net has not been attended by any “new” hams that are looking for guidance and assistance to improve their radio skills.
Equipment Inventory Status – The club needs to determine if there is equipment that we do not need and could be sold for income for the club. Lindy was added to the Tech Committee so that she had access to the equipment spreadsheet. The Board is considering to take some of the equipment to the swap meet to sell and unload some of the equipment.
V. Old Business
Status of Club Shirts – Sandy’s web problems have been solved and now members can go into the website and order merchandise. The one-time discount will apply to all current members.
Field Day discussion – This year Field Day will be at Valley Camp. There will be a fee to park your RV and tent camp on the property. The costs will be less than those at the evac pit, as we will not need to keep a generator running to provide power for the weekend. Valley Camp has electrical outlets available, showers and bathrooms available. SNOVARC and the Issaquah groups will have some meetings to discuss food costs and probably include a porta potty to help those who are not real mobile on their feet.
VI. New Business
Since no other SNOVARC members volunteered to run for the two open Board positions (Vice President and Secretary), a motion was made to pass a unanimous ballot to approve that Kirk (current VP) and Mike (current Secretary) remain in the current roles for two more years. All attendees unanimously voted in the affirmative to allow Kirk and Mike remain in their current roles.
VII. Open Discussion
The 5th Thursday of the month drill proved that most members could reach all the repeaters. The GMRS Channel 16 test did work as well as we hoped. Colin suggested since our GMRS test was basically a UHF simplex test, that the next time we drill, we choose a VHF simplex channel because the characteristics of VHF will allow the signal to go farther than UHF.
Tom’s 220 repeater is now working again. Please see if you can reach his 220 MHz repeater on 223.96 with a negative shift (222.360 MHz) and a PL tone of 123.0 Hz.
Paul (W7PFB) and Howard (WA1HEM) will be providing a STARLINK presentation to the club this Thursday, 2/6 at the Duvall Fire House.
Meeting adjourned at 8:05 p.m
