August 14th, 2023 Meeting Minutes

The August 14th, 2023 monthly HARC meeting was held at Hermiston High School in the ILC and was called to order by President Sam at 19:00.

Member Attendees: KI7CUS, W7ILD, W7JJK, W7MWK, AA7AZ, KK7JLW, AA7TH, NB7O, KE4TRR, KF6EV, KB7CKJ, KG7YWM

Guests:  Alexis

New Members: None

The July 2023 meeting minutes and August 2023 Secretary/Treasurer’s Report were distributed via email by J. Kelso on 08/01/2023.

A motion was made by Todd to adopt the July meeting minutes as presented.  Motion was seconded by Mike.  Motion passed unanimously.

The August 2023 Secretary/Treasurer’s Report was read by Jeff K.

Ongoing Business

1. 1. Sam gave an update on the speakers that were purchased last month for use with the Go-kit.  The speakers are a bit of a disappointment both in terms of performance and size as they won’t fit in the Go-kit box.

2.   Dennis provided a solar report to the club.

3.   GSCH update – Alan reported that members of the club’s project working group had a meeting with Matt Moore in the GSCH Boardroom on July 28th.  Members present were Alan, Jeff, Jim, and Kevin.  A representative from the hospital’s contractor Uni-Tech, Guy Sims, was present along with another Uni-Tech employee.  There was an open sharing of ideas between the working group and Matt.  Antennas on the roof and the coax to hook them up were discussed as well as the possibility of terminating them in the Boardroom for use during an emergency.  The cables would be terminated in a disused AV cabinet on the wall of the Boardroom.   The next week, Alan spoke with Matt Moore via telephone and found out that Matt had very recently discovered two more Diamond (X50A and X300A) antennas in his office that had been stored behind some furniture.  During that conversation, Alan also learned that the hospital doesn’t currently have the money to hire a contractor to do the work that is required to install the antennas on the roof.  Matt said that there is an annex off of his office in which one of the new radios can be installed. A dual-band antenna is already mounted on the roof with coax leading into Matt’s office.  Matt thought that it’d be a good idea to hook up one of the new radios in that annex with the coax that’s in his office so that it can be tested on VHF and UHF frequencies.  Matt has offered to clear out the items that are currently being stored in the annex so that the club may install one of the new radios and begin testing it.

4.  Jeff gave an update on the repeater interference issue with the .425 digital repeater on Jump Off Joe.  He’s stopped communicating with the representatives of the repeater group that owns the .425 and is now working with the IACC representative to try to resolve the problem.  The IACC rep would like us to try disabling the outbound tone and Whitley has agreed to go up to the repeater site to do so.

5.  Club logo update – Sam displayed the logos that were under consideration for the club logo.  He discussed the logo that the club members voted upon at last month’s meeting, specifically its color.  He asked the club to decide if the tower color should be a two-tone black and gray or if it should be just black.  A vote was held and it was decided that the tower should be just black without gray shading.   After the vote, a lengthy discussion around the colors on the patch as well as the shading around some of the objects ensued.  Kevin asked Sam to get an embroidery cost estimate for logo choices one and two, and the consensus seemed to be that the club needed an idea of the embroidery costs involved with adding colors to the design in order to make a decision on the number of colors on the patch.  A consensus was also reached that there should be no shading on the lightning bolts.  There should be a black color call sign on option one and a red color call sign on option two and neither call sign should be blue, according to the comments from the membership.

6.  Black Mountain repeater maintenance trip – Dennis said that most of the maintenance on the trip was done up on the tower itself.  Stuart spent most of the day up on the tower taping coax back up, tightening fasteners, and otherwise performing maintenance on the mast, antenna, and cable.  The fittings on the tower from the antennas on down have been tightened and  secured with tape and the packet antenna that was askew on the tower has been better secured to the tower.   A sketchy wire support device was replaced with a better support mechanism and SWR fluctuations subsided as a result. The inside of the shack was completely cleaned out and SWR tests were done on all of the antennas and all of them tested well after maintenance.  Weeds were trimmed around the shack and the repeaters were blown out.  All repeater makes and models were recorded.  Stuart took a plethora of pictures of all of the equipment in and around the shack.  The next week, Whitley and Emery went up and removed the two sets of bad batteries from the shack and took them to Casiday Batteries and received a check for $9.04 for them.  There are four sets of keys to the repeater site on Black Mountain.  Dennis has two of the sets and Alan has two of the sets at the UC EOC.

New Business

1. 1. Kevin mentioned that he’d like to begin testing on Tuesday nights rather than Monday nights for September and October as he’ll be teaching a class on Monday nights, and that the change to Tuesdays may be permanent.  He’d like to do the testing at St. John’s Church and will email the club with the details.  A sign-up is available on the W5YI website, and we need to link to that signup site on our website.  Jeff will modify our website and Kevin will provide the information to Jeff to use on our website.

2. 2. One person (Alan) will be receiving rodeo tickets for helping out on the wagon train net.

3. 3. Jeff mentioned that the school district has computers available for donation to any 501c3, and he brought a specimen for examination.  A motion was made by Tom Martin and seconded by Kevin to request that 10 computers be donated.  Motion carried unanimously.

4. 4. Jeff mentioned that the school district also had a hard sided case to donate.  A motion to accept the donation of the case was made by Mike and seconded by Chuck.  Motion carried unanimously.

5. 5. Sam mentioned that he believes that Winter Field Day should be close but could still exercise portable power, camping, and etc.  He solicited ideas from anyone who knew of a location in town that could be used by the club for the event.

6. 6. Jeff sent out via email information about Amazon’s Changex.org grant, which is accepting applications through the end of August.

7. 7. Jeff suggested that next month’s meeting might be held in the new HHS Annex.  Nobody seemed to object to the idea.

8. 8. Sam offered to help with the Dennis Kuykendal estate and will make a list of what is available for sale and will share that list with the club.  Club members will work out pricing with the seller directly.

Announcements:

1.  Club breakfast – Saturday, August 19th at Rayz Dayz, Umatilla at 8:00 AM.

2.  “Route 66 on the air” will take place during the second week of September.

3.  Dennis mentioned that our area is under an excessive heat warning.

The meeting was adjourned by AA7TH at 20:13.

Respectfully submitted by Jeff Kelso, W7JJK.