Choctaw Amateur Radio Club Business Meeting Minutes, August 16, 2004

CALL TO ORDER:  The call to order was at 7 p.m. in the Oak Room of the Eastern Oklahoma County Technology Center and was followed by our Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

OPENING COMMENTS FROM THE PRESIDENT:  President C. Weilbrenner reminded us of the OCAPA 5 wpm CW course to begin 13 September on 224.880 MHz with link to 145.330, and to call WA5U at 405-670-9365 for any details needed.

ROLL CALL and SIGN-IN:  Ten members were present including three club officers and we had two guests, Burl Arbogast and Michael Pearson.  Burl joined our club later in the meeting.  We may get some help with our web page posting from Michael Pearson after he joins, he said.

REPORTS:

    Sick report:              Nothing to report.

    Secretary's report:    Minutes of the July 19th meeting were read by the secretary.  A motion to accept was made by                                    Richard Edwards and seconded by O. J. Watkins.

    Treasurer's report:     This report was read by the treasurer and made part of the secretary's records.  The treasury is                                    still in good shape.

    CORA report--Don McDown reporting:  Chuck Kanach will be out of town at the time of the next Ham Holiday, so he                                                             can't be president.  Dave Duskin is the new president.  A new constitution                                                                 was voted in.  The CORA web page has now been placed with a faster                                                                     Internet host.  The vendors seemed happy about July's Ham Holiday.                                                                          Expenses for Ham Holiday were met and a profit of $3,000 was declared.                                                                  Attendance was slightly lower than last year but tickets sold exceeded last                                                                 year by about 100.

    Technical report:      Ron Earnest said there has been no change in the repeater status.  We had a discussion about                                   adding an announcement on the repeater about club meetings, but it was not decided because                                   of concern about interference with EchoLink.

NEXT TECHNICAL MEETING:  The first Thursday in September technical meeting will be used to plan for Amateur Radio Awareness Week.  Mike Kimbro will talk to us at the October meeting about Graphical Information Global Mapper (a Global Information Systems package that he uses at work).

OLD BUSINESS:  
    1. The Memorandum of Understanding with the city of Choctaw has been available for reading on our web site for few         weeks.  The next step is to provide a copy to the Fire Chief and other city officials, and if it is approved the final             stepwill be the addition of signatures of our club president and the city officials.
    2. There are six QRZ 2003-2004 CD's left to sell.  Any help is appreciated.
    3. Bill Crossland now has a recall chart or list for emergency response.  If you want to be added to it, let him know at         390-1514.  We had a discussion about forming an emergency response team, first as a club project, then later to         have it merged into ARRL's Amateur Radio Emergency Service.
    4. The emergency exercise that the Choctaw Fire Chief had planned to ask us to help with was dropped because             another exercise took priority over his time.

NEW BUSINESS
    1. Mike McFarland has offered to buy the last section of our old tower.  We approved, but no vote was needed                 because we voted to sell it last year.
    2. Preliminary plans to show how amateur radio can help the community in emergencies were discussed.  We                 decided to set up a station in a public place, probably Choctaw Plaza, September 11.  It will probably run from 9         a.m. until dark. The Office of Homeland Security has exhibit material available.  President C. will try to locate a             club banner.  Members enthusiastically suggested many subjects that could be exhibited, such as weather                 spotting, GPS mapping of storm shelters, health and welfare traffic, and satellite communications.  A planning             committee was set up consisting of C. Weilbrenner, Bill Crossland, Don McDown, and Richard Edwards.
    3. Mike Kimbro volunteered to be the net control station at our business meetings, using a 5-watt HT and power                 supply running on the already installed outside antenna that has a lead-in in the Oak Room.

MISCELLANEOUS:  O. J. Watkins said he still has a lot of amateur TV equipment for UHF that he has not used for a while in case anyone is interested in learning something about that.  He does not have the antennas now.  He said there is a repeater in Tulsa that you can hit with 50 watts to a beam antenna.  Also, that KA5EOS repeater in Guthrie on 147.105 is one of three that used to be for TV.  The others were 70 cm and 1.2 GHz.  Ask O. J. if you are curious.  

CLOSE:  At 8:30 p.m. O. J. made a motion for adjournment and it was seconded by Mike Kimbro.  We voted to do so.