All,
Yesterday we had a board meeting to discuss these items :
- Open General Meeting – Soon
- EOC coverage for Energy Showcase
- Possible Tower Access
- Web Page Progress
- Argonne News Announcement
- Officer Elections
As you can see, we have several items we are following. I am hoping to arrange an open General meeting next month to be held in the evening here on site. Tentatively it will be held from 6pm to 7 or 7:30. I believe I have a guest speaker from the York Radio Club who will be speaking about APRS. Dragon, NN9L, made this presentation to his club earlier and it looks good. Other topics for future meetings could include my presentation on Echolink, and possibly one on the history of the AARC itself. I am always open to suggestions on topics. More on this meeting as it firms up.
It looked like they may have been gearing up for a tower climb in which case we would have had then try and replace the short jumper from the feed line to the antenna. Unfortunately, what I thought was feed line and connectors for such a climb is intended for instillation into one of the buildings to upgrade some other system. We will be informed of the next tower access so we can get this work done. This would once again give us access to our antenna high up on the State Police tower. No date for such an access is now available.
For the past couple of months I have been working on a new web page for the club which will be hosted by the Lab. Our current webpage is not accessible to us here at the Lab due to the fact that the hosting server has some other sites associated with it that are black listed for cyber security issues. The Lab has provided all Lab clubs with the resources to publish a web page. Unfortunately, I’m no programmer and the format of the page is not HTML. Torben has offered to work with me to get the page ready for public viewing. I’ll let you know as soon as that happens. Lacking a web page for the moment I intend to put an announcement in the Argonne News calling for interested Hams here at the Lab to not only join the club but more importantly, get involved in the club. This club is for you the members, not the board, and we need to know what you want from the club and then give you the opportunity peruse that interest. As always, your suggestions are welcome and encouraged.
We also got a progress report from Bob on the new mast assembly for the relocation of our current antenna. We discussed several ways of mounting to the building to allow us to tilt the mast / antenna down for maintenance. We are looking into how to purchase a new mast and have it delivered to us here at the lab. I’ll keep you up to date as that proceeds.
Finally, the last item of business is the need for nominees for club officers. Once again, if any of you (here at Argonne) would like to nominate yourself or someone else for President, vice President or Sectary / Treasurer, please forward that nomination to [email protected] to be included in this year’s elections. This club is only as good as what we the members put into it and it’s more than just a repeater! Try and think of how you would like to get involved and pass it on to us here.
Talking about the repeater, it seems to be operating just fine and I have heard no complaints about the echolink operation. I monitor the repeater when I’m in my office and it seems to be more active than most others I listen to. I’ve not seen echolink drop off at all in the past month which is great. As always, if you have comments please forward them to [email protected] . Torben, Rich and myself read all email sent to that address and one of us will respond when warranted. Finally, I hope to see you at tomorrow’s “Energy Showcase” from 9 to 4 here at Argonne. You can still register at: http://www.regonline.com/builder/site/Default.aspx?EventID=1097223 . I’ll be working at the APS from 9 to noon if you do stop in. Enjoy
Please pass this on to any and all you think might be interested!! Applications available for membership by emailing to [email protected]
From your club Board,
Tim – N9UEB
p.s. This is a photo of several of the club members taking down the old mast and unused antenna, making way for our new mast an the new home for our repeater antenna. Thanks for the work Jay and Bob ( and Bob’s co-worker )
