W4WVP

President Reed called the meeting to order at 7:35 PM. The minutes of the July 2009 meeting were approved as posted. The Treasurer made his report. George, KR4MU, left as note that he was in upper New York state and would miss the meeting.

ARRL - Dennis reported that new methods of submitting material for awards were being implemented. This included electronic field checking of QSL cards submitted and direct entry of material into the Log Book of the World. More folks were signing onto the ARRL bill for CC&Rs that would affect amateur antennas. There are several ARRL actions pending before the FCC, but there has been no word on the resolution of these matters. (Side discussions will be held with Dennis on matters like non-amateur use of amateur bands, particularly those set aside for space operations.)

Emergency Communications - Members were urged to sign up for the Marine Corps Marathon, which is the last weekend in October. (October 24-25). President Reed noted that we are in the hurricane season. Hurricane Bill is expected to pass along the Atlantic Coast, but could strike the coast if it moves to the west. Being ready included having charged batteries, and emergency food supplies including water.

It was noted that the best backup power for radios is a deep cycle marine battery which is floated on a trickle charger. If the line power fails, the batteries are available to power the radios without any other changes. Suitable connectors, such as Anderson Power Poles should be used to hook all the equipment together. Publications from ARES gave more information about emergency communications. Several pieces of equipment for emergency power were shown and discussed. (Members examined the club’s emergency equipment after the meeting.)

CERT Training Classes - CERT will have two new classes in September. Room was available for club members. A two day Technician license training class will be held on the first two Saturdays in October with the exam administered after the second class. This will be held at the Arlington Fire Training Academy in Shirlington.

Cynthia noted that at a recent national meeting on emergencies, amateur radio was seen as an important resource. She also noted the potential for use of Family Radio Service equipment.
[For more information see URL: http://www.reactintl.org/blog/?p=372]

Old Business - President Reed noted that Ken had reworked the soundcard interface cables for the Kenwood TS-850S radio. Dennis will inquire about the club’s Field Day results. Volunteers were still needed for the County Fair for Saturday and Sunday evenings.

New Business - Art noted that the AMSAT Technical Symposium will be at BWI Airport later this year. It is the 40th anniversary of AMSAT. There also will be a SimSat launched on Sept 26, 2009. See URL: http://patkilroy.com/simsat/4/.

Up Coming Potential Events - CQ Worldwide RTTY Contest Sept 27, JOTA October 18, and ARRL SSB Sweepstakes November 22. Let President Reed know about your interests.

In attendance were: Ken WB4AKK, Jack K5OTZ, Arthur W4ART, Roy AI4GO, Mike KG4RKL, Prentiss K4PDJ, Mike KA8OPJ, Cynthia KJ4CLD, Pat KJ4OCA, Chuck KI4DHW, Dennis W4RWF, and Gary KC5QCN.

President Reed called the meeting to order at 7:30 PM. A minor correction was made to the previous month’s minutes and the approved. W4WVP was the only club station in Arlington County that participated in the Virginia QSO Party. The Treasurer made his report. George provided an accounting of the food costs for Field Day.

CERT - Cynthia noted that 46 CERT members had participated in the Pentagon Operational Emergency Test that concerned decontamination of the test subjects. CERT had also helped a group from Georgia (part of former USSR) with readiness for emergencies.

CERT will also sponsor a two day Technician training course on October 3 & 10 at the Arlington Fire Training Academy in Shirlington. The County will start an emergency advisory committee in October to advise the Arlington County Board on preparations for future emergency preparedness.

An event on June 22nd in Fairfax required both the CERT and Red Cross to respond. Their emergency victims included an number of elderly Korean and Vietnamese people. Language was a barrier. There was also a need to provide proper food for these people. These were practical lessons for all involved.

Old Business - The W4WVP repeater is sounding very good. There was one repeater outage due to a power loss. Craig noted he has a backup repeater should the main unit fail.

Field Day was considered to have went well. Certain prizes were awarded by drawing to participants. Mike will submit the Field Day log with scans of newspaper articles. The submission will include photos of the Field Day Information Booth and the banner outside the building. Mike will edit the Field Day log to assure accuracy and completeness. He will send it on a CD to Dennis for e-mail submission to the ARRL. Mike noted that the use of FD Log as the logging method did lead to some errors. Some sections were not correctly entered in the log. However, overall, the antenna situation was good with less antenna cross talk. Our final class was 10F.

The discussion about Field Day covered some the of the following points. First, Field Day was providing good practice for emergency communications. Some members felt the Field Day organization and setup process could be more organized. Others supported a more laid back approach. Ideas for changes included having designated leaders for each band or band & mode combination. This could included getting advance commitments from some members in advance of the actual event. Again, it was noted that the key was getting many of the members operating the actual club equipment in an emergency environment.

Arlington County Fair - This is August 19 to 23. We will have a booth with the Red Cross, potentially with electricity. President Reed solicited members to notify him by e-mail of their intent to participate.

New Business - The W4WVP repeater has a new south side receiver site. The club was requested to reimburse the Repeater Committee for $ 235 for a new antenna and coaxial cable needed to set up this site. This was approved by vote of the club. The site has very good coverage of south Arlington. The site uses a PL tone because of interference from other sources on the input frequency. It was noted that at some point, it may be desirable to add the PL tone to the Rosalyn site, which also receives interference in the input frequency range of the repeater.

The possibility of setting up a Volunteer Examiners group for the club was also mentioned, but not discussed in detail. The meeting adjourned at 8:30 PM.

Attendees were: Ken WB4AKK, George KR4MU, Mike KG4RKO, Jack WA4FXX, Chuck KI4DHW, Prentiss K4PDJ, Cynthia KJ4CLK, Mike NW3V, Gary KC5QCN, Craig K4GGR, and David Church.

President Reed called the meeting to order at 7:55 PM. Some members were placing ropes for the Field Day 80 meter antenna. The minutes of the previous meeting were approved. The Treasurer made his report.

ARRL-Dennis reported that there was little new. The Log Book of the World was reporting about 2 million contacts a month. There was an electronic reporting of contacts on VHF and UHF. Working 100 grid squares would lead to an award. Electronic field reporting for other awards was in beta testing. The ARRL Board will meet next month. The ARRL is otherwise ok.

CERT-Cynthia reported that they were seeking volunteers for the July 11th Decontamination Exercise at the Pentagon. The CERT class had graduated 24 or 25 new amateurs. There was enough interest that they will do the 2 day class again in the near future.

EnComm-Gary had no updates. Volunteers were requested for the Alexandria Waterfront Festival

Old Business-The new 2 meter radio was passed around. That will replace the IC-211. It would be hooked up after the meeting. It is a 55 watt radio.

VA QSO Party-The club will get a certificate. We were the only club station in Arlington County.

Red Cross-The Disaster Communications Team will meet tomorrow.

Repeater- The club repeater is working ok. Improvements are being made to some of the remote receivers. It was recommended that members add the PL tone (107.2 Hz) to their transmit signal to assure they would bring up all of the remote receivers. There are still some interference problems to be solved. Use of the repeater was encouraged.

Field Day- General instructions were to load the program FD Log and get some experience with it. The use of FD Log also required you to load Python on your computer. The need for laptop computers was noted, as well as a network switch and a UPS. NW3V would make up CDs with the software.

The overall plan for Field day was to have as many as 10 transmitters at the start with coverage of 80, 40, 20, 15, and 10 meters HF. 6 meters, 2 meters, and 70 cm were also included. A possible 2 meter digital operation would give another band mode combination.
The key limiting factor was the number of antennas, radios, and operators available.

Setup will begin Saturday at 10 AM. Operation at 2PM. Operators could stay late on Saturday, but not all night. Operations on Sunday would be 10 AM to 2 PM. The Red Cross mobile command vehicle would visit during the day, but also would go to other Field Day sites.

President Reed called the meeting to order at 7:40 PM. Attendance was light. The minutes of the April 2009 meeting were approved.

The Treasurer made his report. He can still take orders for Field Day ‘stuff’ from the ARRL.

The Secretary received mailing labels from Dennis Bodson with the new amateurs in Arlington County. Plans for a mailing will be developed. Dennis was out recuperating from recent surgery.

Emergency Communications - Gary noted that the hurricane season would begin on June 1st. Field Day would be good practice for emergency operations It was also noted that the Hurricane Net would start operations. See the Internet for more information on the Hurricane Net.

The Armed Forces Day Cross Band Test was conducted from the Pentagon MARS Station under the call sign WAR. Over 200 contacts were made during this operation.

Dayton Hamvention - Gary reported that the Military Affiliate Radio System would be replaced by the Military Auxiliary Radio System. There would probably be cutbacks in the billets assigned to some systems, including Navy-Marine Corps MARS. Attendance at Dayton seemed to be down, but a good time was had by all. Randy reported there were new radios from manufacturers or promises of new radios in future years. The ARRL area had several booths. These included Scouting, Marine, and Astronaut booths.

Old Business - The Yaseu 2800 VHF radio looked like an attractive VHF radio to acquire for the club, especially for emergency communications. It was a 65 watt radio and could be programmed with all needed channels as presets. A motion to authorize purchase of this radio at a cost of up to $ 150 was made and approved.

Members were asked to check the Internet site for the Virginia QSO party for their logs to see if they were correct for final submission.

New Business - The Red Cross Disaster Communications Team would meet at the Regional (Fairfax) Headquarters this Thursday to discuss plans for future communications systems. The Red Cross had Vertex VX-10 UHF radios that were surplus for sale.

Field Day Plans - George stated he would cook and shop for the Field Day operation. Notes on George’s menu have been distributed. George would cook indoors. The draft press release for Field Day was passed around for the members information. Field Day posters and flyers were also distributed for posting as appropriate.

Morse code compact discs were distributed to interested members. A code course would be given again in the fall.

In attendance were: Ken WB4AKK, Mike KG4RKL, Jack WA4FXX, George KR4MU, Arthur W4ART, Randy WB4MJF, Ian KI4DTP, Ted, Jesse, Prentiss K4PDJ, Gary KC5QCN, Mike KA8OPJ, and Mike NW3V (briefly).

Draft Minutes of Arlington Amateur Radio Club Meeting of March 17, 2009 -

President Reed called the meeting to order at 7:38 PM. He stated that the Treasurer was absent. He assumed all members have paid their dues.

ARRL Report (Dennis) - New ARRL awards including the Triple Play have proved popular. The Triple Play is Worked All States in one of three modes: CW, Phone, or Digital. Other new awards were being created, as well as electronic checking of award submissions, which now included a digital compact disc, as well as paper QSL cards. The files for DXCC submissions were being electronically submitted for that award. The Log Book of the World has now about 200 million contacts entered.

Ms. Laura Smith, the new FCC person for amateur radio enforcement is taking her position seriously, and doing a good job at this time.

EnComm (Gary and Jim) - The ARRL Section (Virginia) has a new Section Emergency Coordinator and Public Information Coordinator (the same person). The Pentagon Amateur Radio Club is considering joining AARC for Field Day. The club’s antennas have been remarked and the batteries checked. It was noted that the club did not have any voltage boosters for the batteries, but that could be considered in the future.

It was noted that the club’s emergency power source remains the diesel generator, which has proven very reliable.

Up Coming Events - Baltimore Hamboree and Computerfest at Timonium, Maryland March 28 and 29th. The Virginia QSO party would be Sunday, March 22 starting at 10:30 AM. (Contact Jack Reed).

Other Business - Dennis will print out mailing labels for new amateurs in Arlington for the club Secretary. The idea of a swap meet to help members dispose of older equipment was also raised. Randy will look into the idea of a club “face book”. Dennis will look at material available for education programs in the schools.

President Reed called the meeting to order at 7:39PM. The minutes from the March 2009 meeting were approved as published on the web site. The Treasurer made his report and stated he would take orders for Field Day 2009 items. A list of possible order items was circulated.

ARRL Report - Dennis reported that the FCC has lost a case where certain individuals were distributing high power radios which could be modified for use on the Citizen’s Band. There is a new web site for the ARRL Roanoke Division. Comments about the site can be made to the web master.

EnComm Report - Members were reminded again to register on the Virginia ARES web site. May 9th was the date for the Cross Band Test from the Pentagon Amateur Radio Club. Volunteers were solicited. On a date to be determined, the ARRL Level 1 (entry level) emergency training course would be given. This would be followed at a later date by the advanced course. Anticipated cost was $ 30 for the training material and certification. The course would be given in a one day program.

Red Cross Material - Sheets were distributed with the Red Cross, Arlington ARES, and other local emergency information. Information also included programmed channel information for the Red Cross Icom radios. Members were advised to keep these sheets handy for emergency use. Club members were advised to think about loss of commercial communications due to construction accidents or vandalism as potential scenarios for communications emergencies.

Old Business - The club members are still reviewing the purchase of a new 2 meter FM radio for use in emergencies. It was noted that radio prices are very low now, and suitable radio would cost about $ 110.

New Business - Club Net - More volunteers were requested to man the club nets on Tuesday evenings. This would spread out the net control duties.

Club Activity - A possible club operating date at the end of May was discussed. This would keep club members active on the air and make them more familiar with the club’s capabilities as part of the area emergency infrastructure.

Field Day - Invitations to local officials were drafted by Mike, NW3V. Mike has also drafted a press release and requested help in getting it distributed to the media. The Field Day plan was to use the FD Log program used previously. (See the club web site under Field Day 2009.) The group will try to make certain improvements to the software as appropriate. Use of the software is important for both logging and making sure only one station is on one band and in a particular mode at a given time. Field Day modes are CW, Digital (not CW), and Phone.

This approach requires we bring computers for each operating position. We will also need networking hubs to tie all PCs together. Digital stations should have two computers, one for logging and one for digital operations.

New Field Day Antenna - Mike suggested we erect a full 80 meter antenna on the east side of the Red Cross site. For this project, an work party this Sunday at 2 PM will try to get preliminary leader cords into the two supporting trees before there is further leaf growth.
The club will need to provide wire, coaxial cables, barrel connectors and adaptors to enable use of all antennas.

Field Day Setup - This is proposed to start at 10 AM and the club will be ready to operate at 2PM. The club voted $ 100 for food supplies. George, KR4MU will cook.

The meeting adjourned at 9:20 PM.

In attendance were: Ken, WB4AKK, Prentiss, K4PDJ, Chuck, KJ4DHW, Cynthia, KJ4CLK , Jim, K9AUC, Roy, AI4GO, Randy, WB4MJF, Arthur, W4ART, George, KR4MU, Jack WA4FXX, Dennis, W4PWF, Gary, KC5QCN Mike, KG4RKL, and Mike, NW3V.

Draft Minutes of Arlington Amateur Radio Club Meeting of March 17, 2009 -

President Reed called the meeting to order at 7:38 PM. He stated that the Treasurer was absent. He assumed all members have paid their dues.

ARRL Report (Dennis) - New ARRL awards including the Triple Play have proved popular. The Triple Play is Worked All States in one of three modes: CW, Phone, or Digital. Other new awards were being created, as well as electronic checking of award submissions, which now included a digital compact disc, as well as paper QSL cards. The files for DXCC submissions were being electronically submitted for that award. The Log Book of the World has now about 200 million contacts entered.

Ms. Laura Smith, the new FCC person for amateur radio enforcement is taking her position seriously, and doing a good job at this time.

EnComm (Gary and Jim) - The ARRL Section (Virginia) has a new Section Emergency Coordinator and Public Information Coordinator (the same person). The Pentagon Amateur Radio Club is considering joining AARC for Field Day. The club’s antennas have been remarked and the batteries checked. It was noted that the club did not have any voltage boosters for the batteries, but that could be considered in the future.

It was noted that the club’s emergency power source remains the diesel generator, which has proven very reliable.

Up Coming Events - Baltimore Hamboree and Computerfest at Timonium, Maryland March 28 and 29th. The Virginia QSO party would be Sunday, March 22 starting at 10:30 AM. (Contact Jack Reed).

Other Business - Dennis will print out mailing labels for new amateurs in Arlington for the club Secretary. The idea of a swap meet to help members dispose of older equipment was also raised. Randy will look into the idea of a club “face book”. Dennis will look at material available for education programs in the schools.

Members in attendance were: Ken WB4AKK, Gary KC4QCN, Dennis W4PWF, Mike NW3V, Arthur W4ART, Randy WB4MFJ, Jack K5OTZ, Mike KA8OPJ, Jack WA4FXX, and Jim K9AUC.

Arlington Amateur Radio Club Draft Minutes - February 17, 2009

President Reed called the meeting to order at 7:30 PM. The Treasurer made his report. The current club roster was passed around for addition or correction. The January 2009 minutes were approved. Previous 2008 meeting minutes were allows to stand as published.

ARRL - The new radio rules enforcement person at the FCC is Ms. Laura Smith. She seems to be taking action on interference reports submitted by amateur radio operators. There is a new FCC Acting Commissioner, but no reports on his outlook on amateur radio.

The ARRL logbook of the world is very successful, reporting over 200 million contacts. New items, such as DXCC and other operating awards are being added. ARRL is supporting conversion to digital TV as needed. Concerns about BPL are fading as actual use of BPL seems to be in decline.

EnComm- The ARRL held as meeting at Frostfest of SECs, DECs, and EC s. There is a new ARES website at URL: http://www.aresracesofva.org/. This area will sponsor an ARRL EnComm training program at Level 1 of training. The program dates are TBD, but will be announced to the club members. There will be a fee to cover books and exams.

Forthcoming Events - Winterfest, Feb 22. National Marathon, March 21. Additional April 18 (Bull Run Run ??). Charlotte, NC hamfest in March.

Event Results - On Inauguration Day the Red Cross operated with 50 teams all connected by radio. The Red Cross ERV was deployed, and in communication with government officials and radio amateurs. Over 40 response calls to medical emergencies were handled. This included cases of hypothermia, but also the birth of a child. The Red Cross shelters were open and in contact with the headquarters. Separate nets were used for logistics. It all worked very well.

The Club was open for the Worldwide RTTY contest. A number of club members participated and learned about RTTY operations.

At the meeting, two coaxial antennas were demonstrated that were home brew. These are often simple to make and provide good emergency coverage.

The club discussed options for new GO KIT radios. 2 meter mobile units are available at about $150. Cross band VHF/UHF radios are about $ 350. VHF/UHF radios without cross band are about $250. It was decided that more practice was needed with the GO KIT rdios to make sure the members knew how to operate them. One future program would go over the GO KITs and how to operate the radios. No decision was made on radio purchases.

How to control the clubs internet lists was also discussed. The current club list includes interested non-members for information purposes. We will reconsider if two separate lists can be constructed. It was noted at this time there are no phone trees. The idea of a W4WVP FaceBook Group was also discussed. The Secretary will find out about the ARRL listing of new licensees and contact them about the club.

Upcoming Operating Events - It was noted that volunteers are needed for Field Day. Upcoming operating events are VA QSO Party March 22 (10:30 AM - 4:00 PM), and SSB DX contest on March 8th. Please contact President Reed if interested.

The meeting was adjourned. Attendees were: Ken WB4AKK, Gary KC5QCN, Mike KG4RKL,
Arthur W4ART, Craig K4GGR, Chuck KJ4DHW, Jim K9AUC, Andrew KI4THF, Randy WB4MJF, Jack WA4FXX, Dennis W4PWF, Cynthia KJ4CLK, Mike KA8OPJ, George KR4MU, Jack KB3KKY, and Mike NW3V.