December 2015 meeting minutes

The meeting was called to order at 7:38 PM, after the first round of pineapple upside-down cake.

Attending: Mary KU5Z, Richard N5YPJ, Jim AB5JK, Roger K0YY, Jason KS5TX and Erik K5WW.

Last month’s minutes were forgotten and because of that not read; we unanimously agreed to blame Richard for that mishap.

The National Parks on The Air event will start soon. We’re still thinking about a date and location. If you have any ideas for parks you’d like us to be active from let us know!

President KF5EJX mentioned that the hospital wants us to run regular health checks on the diesel generator outside the shack. He’s asked that it would be put on the club’s property list so that we can truly treat it as our own and do the maintenance.

The finalized list of names and photos of frequent shack operators had been delivered to hospital management, for identification purposes.

There are still no published results for this year’s Texas State Parks on The Air event. Jason contacted the event sponsor and was told that the OM who always took care of that passed away after this year’s episode; and that they are looking for someone to take over that task.

Activity at the shack has been plagued by radiated noise for a few months now. The interference can be heard on all HF bands and 6 meters. Jason and Erik did some basic direction finding a few weeks ago; and found a few really noisy areas a few blocks down the road and alongside the highway, most likely all caused by old, faulty powerline transformers and/or lights. More research is needed to track down the exact location and equipment. Richard has loaned us his MFJ AC line noise meter to help doing that, and will help out with the footwork as well.

Report from the treasurer: there is currently $926 in our old but perfectly clean sock.

To round off the year we watched a 1959 video produced by the Johns Hopkins University, that was made for ABC to promote amateur radio. And there was more cake. 🙂

As always, the meeting was adjourned.