September 2019 Meeting Minutes

Present (15): W1IP, AI1V, W1SMS, W1PPL, KC1AUH, W1LYZ, K1CYW, KC1TX, N1ZD, AA1XV, N1DPD, K1WYQ, KC1KSO, KB1OIE, K1RF
Meeting opened 7:30 by W1IP

July minutes approved.

Department Reports:
Finance: Checking and savings both good. We were able to sell a number of pieces of donated equipment at good prices.


Communications : No communications of note.

Board : No Board actions.

Technical Committee: No problems noted.
With Curt’s imminent move to North Carolina, we need to find a chair for the Technical Committee. Please contact any of the Board members if you are interested. You don’t have to be the world’s greatest techie, you just need to be someone who will work with the club to find the right person to fix things when they need fixing.


Because of rain getting through the roof of the Comm Center, the router we were using for open internet access was destroyed, which took away both our wireless internet at the Comm Center and also our Echolink access. We have offered the Fire Dept a replacement router, but so far they have not installed it.


Public Service:
● Lighthouse to Lighthouse is coming up 9/14. Due to other commitments on our parts, we have asked Jeff Cronin from GFARA to head up the coverage.
● The Parkinson Walk is coming up Oct 5. It’s a short (1-½ hour) operation where we cover the route of a 1-½ mile walk by Parkinson Disease victims who are raising money for research. Parkinson is a horrible disease since it slowly robs people of their ability to walk, talk, digest food, and think clearly. We were shocked last year to discover how many Parkinson victims we individually knew. Pizza and tee-shirts.


Although not quite public service, we did a Lighthouses on the Air (LOTA) deployment at Sheffield Island Light House on August 18. We activated on both 40 and 20 meters, and despite generally bad propagation managed to get contacts well out into the mid-West. Many thanks to KC1GBZ who just happened to bring along a “spare” antenna that we wound up needing to use when we couldn’t get the club’s end-fed to work.

Education Committee: Tech Class scheduled to start 9/26. We have 18 people signed up for the class. About half of them are CERT, the other half are just people interested in getting their licenses.
VE session last Saturday. Two new techs. One upgrade from tech to general. Candidates came from as far away as Middlebury CT (near Waterbury). We remain one of the most active testing centers in CT.

Holiday Party: The annual holiday party will be held on Wed Dec 11 at 6pm at the Laurel Athletic Club in Norwalk. Pricing details to follow.
The meeting was closed at 7:52 pm.

Thank you to Steve, W1SMS, for a very interesting AND eye opening discussion of antenna
tuners – or as he called them “antenna couplers”.

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