W7GRA Meeting of 8/19/2015
Meeting began at 1904 with Joel Hinshaw acting as president.
Present were:
W7GFA GARY ANGER
KF7STP MIKE ORCOTT
KD7JG JOEL HINSHAW
W7IXZ LARRY WILSON
W4PJS GRAHAM HICKS
KD7CEM DON MAGEE
KE7LXY BRENT LINVILLE
W7IYA NANCY WILSON
KB7DRI BARBARA HICKS
KF7UED BRIAN DON
AA7U STEVE RATZLAFF
KA7ISH JESSEE HALE
KB7RGX CAMBER BYBEE
KC7NXX MARC SHAFFER
Meeting began with general introductions, names and callsigns.
Gary read the minutes of the last meeting. Only addition was the specific time of the club BBQ.
Mike O gave the treasurers report. Since last meeting we incurred no expenses and brought in no additional funds. The club has $1,750.95 in the bank.
Old Business:
Larry W is still working on the club repeater technical documentation. It is still a ‘work in progress’.
Club BBQ will be held on September 7th at 4PM at the Hicks’ residence, 900 Main Street, La Grande. Per Graham, you may bring a salad and/or a desert, and folding chairs. The Hicks will provide the dogs, burgers, buns, relishes, etc. This is Labor Day. Joel will send out a reminder e-mail.
Club Breakfast. In spite of the fact that we’re having our BBQ on Monday 9/7, we still agreed to hold a club breakfast at the Flying J on the first Saturday of September, 9/5 at 0900.
Fox Hunt. We decided to hold a Fox Hunt on Saturday, October 24th. It will begin at 1500. Should the fox be located in a short time we agreed to continue the fox hunt with the fox or a new fox hiding again. The frequency is 146.550 simplex. We decided not to hold it on Halloween for fear of possibly being arrested…..??
For the next meeting, if you have direction-finding antennas, please bring them to the next club meeting for demonstrations. Recent QST has an article on tape-measure directional antennas.
New Business: Ted wants to hold a High Frequency antenna building event in his garage on either September 12th of 19th. Ted will have wire, Plexiglas, and SO239 connectors. Pencil in the 19th as a tentative date. We will confirm at the September 16th meeting (of course if Ted wants to do it on the 12th we will inform everybody via e-mail). (Ted’s address is 2702 N ASH, La Grande).
Barb Larson would like to have Marc’s antenna and tower and rotator removed from her house. It is a 40 foot tower. It will likely require a 20 foot trailer to loan onto. Post removal and storage of said items and the potential sale of said items was discussed. The antenna is a 10/15/20 meter 3-element beam. The tower is a crank-up.
Gary will help determine a date for the removal and e-mail the club members to solicit help. Gary will get Barb’s thoughts on the selling of the items with the proceeds going to the club.
Larry W discussed possible changes to 80 meter privileges and some potential new bands to open up to amateur radio use. A 500khz segment, and a 138khz segment
Program: Basics of a dipole antenna presented by Joel. Great discussion of antenna theory ensued.
The meeting adjourned at 2000.
Our next meeting is on 9/16/2015 (“The Happiest Day of my Life” (There is a story behind that, ask Gary))
