THURSDAY-October 26, 2017 – 4:00 PM – BAARC BOARD MEETING MINUTES – BRAINERD FIRE STATION

President: Steve Mott NØCRM
Vice President: John Luce WØWY
Treasurer: Doug Bergsnev WØDWB
Secretary: Ron Finger KØGOP
Past Presidents: Charles Lane W5CCL, Al Doree WØRC
Director At Large: Lyle Amundson KØLFV
Director of Emergency Communications: Dave Schuldheisz KØISZ
Repeater Trustee: Mitch Ahrenstorff ADØHJ
Community & Special Events Coordinator: TBD

Attendees: Steve NØCRM, John WØWY, Ron KØGOP, Al WØRC, Shirley KØDCW, Mitch ADØHJ, Roger W0WUG, and John W3MQD. The President opened the Board Meeting at 4 PM.

Secretary’s Report: 

• Membership roster: 91 members with 63 paid for 2017. The Club roster can be found on the Club website under the “Resources/Members Only”  Current paid members can request an individual password for access via the “Contact Us” form.
• Minutes: The September 2017 meeting minutes will be posted to the “Club Blog” area.
• Correspondence:
• Motion to accept: Al WØRC, SecondMitch ADØHJ,  

Treasurer’s Report: The Treasurer’s report was forwarded to the board showing all month’s account transactions and balances to date.

• Submitted Payables: John W0WY $90 reimbursement for portable rental from Blakeman’s Septic for CQ contest. Ron K0GOP $27.97 reimbursement for FTDI chipset programming cable for Club Motorola portable radios.
• Motion to place a minimum bank balance cap of $2000 for Club spending; not to include the $2000 Hamfest account: Steve NØCRM, SecondJohn WØWY,  
• Motion to accept: Mitch ADØHJ, SecondAl WØRC, Passed

Membership Meeting Programs: The Vice President reviewed recent and future Club programs and events. At the November meeting, Lyle and Mitch will present a program on the new digital mode, FT8.

Upcoming Events: 

CQ WW SSB contest October 28th-29th

• Crow Wing County Fairgrounds
• Friday 7:00PM Central to Sunday 7:00PM Central
• The CQ WW is the largest Amateur Radio competition in the world. Over 35,000 participants take to the airwaves on the last weekend of October (SSB) and November (CW) with the goal of making as many contacts with as many different DXCC entities and CQ Zones as possible.

Digital & Emergency Communications: 

UPDATE: 10/25

• Duluth SKYWARN link is still working: N0EO
• EOC refit: no update from John Bowen; John W0WY will get an update.
• Can perhaps use their training room as well. John/Lyle will check into this.

Old Business: 

New Club Storage container

• Need to determine Key Holders: Lyle, Ron, Al
• Need to Put Key Holder names and phone number on a plate to attach to storage container. Working with Tom KT0MMYnow to get this engraved.

New Business:

Expenditures requests/discussions

• Club will donate 50′ of LMR-400 to Mark Persons as a goodwill gesture for getting us into the Gull Lake site and access to our own entry keys.
• Shelving purchase for the club storage container was already approved at our last meeting
• DR2X upgrade: Motion to trade in DR1X for $300.00: Steve NØCRM, Second, John WØWY, Passed. 
• Provide a check to Crow Wing County Fairgrounds for $200? (Goodwill gesture; We held 3 events there this year; Field Day, Tailgate Hamfest, Trailer exercise/WW CQ event. Motion to give $200 donation to CWC Fairgrounds: John WØWY, Second, Al W0RC, Passed. 

• Hardline connectors for Gull Lake. ~$35-45 7/8″ Ask Mark if he has?
• Cabinet/Enclosure for Gull Lake Repeater equipment. (Rack mount DR1/2X, Rackmount controllers, rack mount computer, rackmount webserver) ~$900.
  • Can possibly save on shipping if we are able to pick up and deliver? (need to investigate that)
  • Motion to purchase a cabinet for Gull Lake not to exceed $1000.00: Steve NØCRM, Second John W0WY.

• Excess inventory of 10 Motorola HT-750 transceivers. Less popular as they require Motorola proprietary programming software and lack digital channel display.
  • Motion to list and sell on ebay: Ron K0GOP, Second John W0WY, Passed.
• The 2018 BAARC officer ballot was discussed, and will be finalized by the secretary for distribution to the membership at the November meeting election.

The Board Meeting was adjourned at 5:20 PM.

THURSDAY-October 26, 2017 – 7:00 PM – BAARC MEMBERSHIP MEETING MINUTES – BRAINERD FIRE STATION

The President opened the Club membership business meeting at 7 PM with 23 members and guests present. A “Show and Tell” program was presented with several members showing various rigs and items of interest in amateur radio. Presenting were Al W0RC: unusual vacuum tubes and hand-built rigs, Ron K0GOP: classic tube breadboard QRP-rigs built by Jim K0VAN, Nick W0NY: 3D printing for HAM radio, and Mitch AD0HJ: new technology in SDR and micro-computer applications.

–Respectfully submitted by Ron KØGOP, Secretary

THURSDAY-SEPTEMBER 28, 2017 – 4:00 PM – BAARC BOARD MEETING MINUTES – BRAINERD Chamber of Commerce

President: Steve Mott NØCRM
Vice President: John Luce WØWY
Treasurer: Doug Bergsnev WØDWB
Secretary: Ron Finger KØGOP
Past Presidents: Charles Lane W5CCL, Al Doree WØRC
Director At Large: Lyle Amundson KØLFV
Director of Emergency Communications: Dave Schuldheisz KØISZ
Repeater Trustee: Mitch Ahrenstorff ADØHJ
Community & Special Events Coordinator: TBD

Attendees: Steve NØCRM, John WØWY, Lyle KØLFV, Al WØRC, Shirley KØDCW, and Mitch ADØHJ. The President opened the Board Meeting at 4 PM.

Secretary’s Report: 

• Membership roster: 90 members. The Club roster can be found on the Club website under the “Resources/Members Only”  Current paid members can request an individual password for access via the “Contact Us” form.
• Minutes: There were no formal meetings in August due to the annual Club Picnic and Fox Hunt.
• Correspondence:
• Motion to accept: Al WØRC, SecondShirley KØDCW,  

Treasurer’s Report: The Treasurer’s report was forwarded to the board showing all month’s account transactions and balances to date.

• Club Equipment Sales: were approximately $800.
• Tailgate Hamfest Sales: $380.00
• Club Container and post expenditures: $2286.00
• Kiwanis Club donation to Club: $100
• Jaycee Run for the Lakes donation to Club: $250

Membership Meeting Programs: The Vice President reviewed recent and future Club programs and events. At the October meeting, interested members will present a “Show and Tell” program on various Ham radio projects.

Upcoming Events: 

Haunted Trail event (Friday-Saturday on October 20-21, 7-9PM)

• Ron KØGOP has contacted the Northland Arboretum, and they are looking forward to our help again this year. The new Executive Director is Vicky Foss, taking over from Matthew Hall this spring.
• Event dates have been moved to a Friday-Saturday on October 20-21, 7-9PM. They request we arrive at 5:30-6PM for a meal and early deployment in the parking and trail assignments.
• Ron will volunteer to chair this event again this year, and is happy to co-chair with anyone else interested. Ron will prepare a quick briefing for our members, along with a sign-up sheet for tonight.

CQ WW SSB contest October 28th-29th

• The CQ WW is the largest Amateur Radio competition in the world. Over 35,000 participants will take to the airwaves on the last weekend of October (SSB) and November (CW) with the goal of making as many contacts with as many different DXCC entities and CQ Zones as possible.

Digital & Emergency Communications: 

UPDATE: 9/28:

• Mitch delivered a repeater for Doug to use.
• Mitch attended the Duluth clubs meeting and heard news about the new Fusion repeater.
• Doug has already returned their repeater, they seem to have other issues.
• N0Eo-ND is now working.
• Packet node going back on Mille Lacs tower, VHF packet station can go from the north to the twin cities.

Old Business: 

Webserver

• Move Website Server computer into the new rack at Crosby.
• Nick has a newer bigger better server… Hard Drives, (Nick/Lyle)
• New rack for the server
• Network is slower at Crosby

Club Remote Station

• Determine a viable multi-band antenna for our remote station antenna.
• 80-40 and tune to what we need Alpha-Delta Need to shorten it.
• Mount and test the antenna at the high-rise (Antenna did not have good bandwidth).
• Move radio and interface into the high-rise.

EOC Station

• New EOC configuration again. (Dave S./John Bowen)
• EOC ham station is going to be re-vamped. The LEC move EOC will cause a Re-do our station again with and the design will provided an elevated desk.
• County board is reviewing design prints.

Repeater linking

• Due to the firmware that is running on the Wires-X machines, we have hit a limitation with the processing power of the Latte Panda PC’s
• We have tested a different processor including a common rack-mount PC/Wires-X system that can be replicated at each of the repeater sites and supports our common goal to have common equipment across our systems.
• A replacement computer provided by Lyle still has the same issues
  • The Newer rack mount system PC’s (2 At Crosby are working)
  • Nick working on the third one for Crow Wing Power replacement.

• Request was verbalized and shared with the board. In a holding pattern until the Wires-X linking test between Crosby and Crow Wing power is set-up, run, and demonstrated for a test period.

New Business:

Expenditures requests/discussions:

• New Club Storage container

• • Need to determine Key Holders
  • Lyle, Ron, Al
  • Need to Put Key Holder names and phone numbers on a plate to attach to storage container.
  • John, Lyle and cell numbers.

• Of late of we have heard a few comments about our BAARC’er/Blog part of our BAARC Website not being updated and or having recent Club Activities added. I have talked to Dave Anderson KEØIUZ and he has agreed to update this part of our Website as long as Club Members forward to him the pictures and or articles to be published.   We have a great start to our new Website, however we should make every effort to keep it current. We can talk more about this at our upcoming Board Meeting.

• • Steve and Mitch have been doing updates.
  • Steve has not been to the Triathlon or the Fox Hunt/Picnic and has not received any photo from anyone for those events
  • Tried to update the Blog with September “All Things HF” but appeared that the server was down late Sunday evening.

• BAARC Website – Dave Anderson KEØIUZ approval to update the BAARC’er part of our website.
  • Let the club know.
  • Send out his email.

• Old Large BAARC Trailer – We have a person who is interested in buying ($800-$1000)
• Should we sell and or spend additional funds on insurance and maintenance?

• • Doug has provided a verbal Yes vote to sell
  • Al has provided a Yes vote to sell
  • Lyle yes
  • John Yes

The Board Meeting was adjourned at 5:20 PM.

THURSDAY-SEPTEMBER 28, 2017 – 7:00 PM – BAARC MEMBERSHIP MEETING MINUTES – BRAINERD Chamber of Commerce

The President opened the Club membership business meeting at 7 PM with 23 members and guests present. Mark KEØLFQ suggested the Club consider supporting the Shriners 5K Turkey Run to be held at 7:00 AM on Thanksgiving Day. The course will include areas located at the Armory and CWC Fairground sites. A show of hands indicated 4 interested operators at present. Pat Goff from Crow Wing Power Cooperative once again provided an informative and interesting program on electrical grounding.

–Respectfully submitted by Ron KØGOP, Secretary