Meeting called to order at 7:31 pm
Number of attendees: 24 (22 members)
Motion made to accept minutes – motion made by Toy, seconded by Sam.
Treasurer’s report: Jim (KC1FB) says that the club’s finances are in good shape. We only spent on a few things for the trailer so our bank account is stable, but we haven’t had any new dues since March.
Presentation: “Low-Cost Test Equipment That You Can Buy on eBay” by Steve Dick (K1RF). Really great, thorough presentation with lots of illustration of budget friendly test equipment. It’ll be up on the website, so you should definitely check it out!
Old Business: GNARC has a small trailer that we keep a lot of our Field Day stuff in, and we had to get it commissioned very quickly, so it was never really organized. The past few weeks, we’ve had a trailer cleanout day where we got rid of extra items that we haven’t been using, organized it, installed some shelving, and fixed the electrical cables. It was finished on May 8th, and we’ll put up some pictures on the website.
Tech Committee: Repeaters are doing okay, in a holding pattern for the beam. Our DMR repeater was replaced since last meeting. We have been working on a borrowed DMR repeater for years, but finally got one of our very own recently (thanks to N1PLH). New Canaan repeater is in a new home for now due to remodeling at Waveny.
Education Committee: We had a VE session this past Saturday. We had two potential hams show up to take licensing exams. One passed their tech, one passed general.
Events: The Bloomin’ Metric will be on the 21st, and we’re in good shape for that in terms of volunteers. The MS Ride still needs more people, but Sam hasn’t been given the information as to where everyone will be stationed yet, so we expect more people will be signing up as the available stations are announced. Last weekend, Paul and Lisa went out to Sheffield Island for their annual clean up day. The powers that be at Sheffield Island are interested in doing more events with us and possibly an educational program in the future.
Field Day: We have 7 people signed up through the website, and 2 more people reached out via email. An issue that we ran into was that if you forget your login info for Sign-up Genie, you can’t do a “forgot your password” – you have to create a new account with another email. But you don’t have to create an account at all to sign up for Field Day! Permits are all taken care of. We’ll also have to organize a “let’s repair the beam” party prior to Field Day if enough operators are interested in coming down. Dinner is free for members, but please give us a headcount so we know how much food to make. We encourage people to bring their families and friends to Field Day, but they need a member escort to partake of food.
New Business: This Friday is the Candlewood Amateur Radio Association’s monthly meeting at 8 pm at the Stony Hill Fire House, and Sam is giving a talk on the $20 SDR radio dongle, specifically focusing on heatmaps and how to build a very cheap antenna analyzer for VHF.
Meeting adjourned at 8:35.
Rachel, KB1VWJ
