Amateur Radio Committee Meeting Minutes

Interest Groups Amateur Radio
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Hello all, if you didn’t make it to the amateur radio committee meeting here is what happened.

The first order of business was to go over committee chair as requested by the board. Ben Groves has served as committee chair but is stepping down and has nominated myself as his replacement. Pat Hykkonen seconded the nomination and the members present voted to recommend me as the new committee chair. Below are those who voted.

@hykkonen
@ke5bud
@Jay
@WaYNeR
@wandrson
@BenjaminGrove

*We then began to review our current standing with finances which we will verify in the coming month.
*Next we went over what we would like to do to improve the station, this included setting up a desktop computer for station, a new customer desk built by us and designed by the members.
*We discussed design of the desk to include rfid access, power pole port for ready access to power, extra hookups to antennas for members radio use, clear desk space with radio being elevated on shelf in the desk.
*We also discussed setting up classes on antenna building and extra license classes,
*We discussed buying an HF antenna to better support our station using our current funds so we would have a better signal getting out. The current antenna in use, a G5RV is producing high swr without the tuner and should an operator forget to tune it could cause damage to the radio. Also this is causing non optimal use of the power we have and limits our range. This was voted on and approved by the members and will be completed at earliest convenience to better our station.
*We discussed possibly working with the DARC to possibly be loaned or given free station equipment with certain conditions.
*We also discussed emergency operations at the station and trying to set up to be a functional EOC.
*We discussed field day and our current commitment to be at the DARC and React site for this year. We discussed and approved payment to DARC and React for food and supplies when we join up for field day from committee funds.
*We also reviewed Pat staying trustee and agreed this was in the clubs best interest.
*We also discussed monthly meetings at a minimum and the next meeting will be sometime in May to be announced.

I believe that sums up most of what we talked about. Feel free to chime in if I missed something guys.

If you have any questions comments or concerns for me please feel free to hit me up on this thread or via PM.

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Justin,

I believe I am the person you didn’t recongnize since it was my first committee meeting (and I am a new member).

I am Walter Anderson, AF5WH

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I did it too - Welcome Walter!

1 Like
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Actually I didn’t even think to check for your screen name after you told me, I was thinking it was another person. I apologise.

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I wasn’t at the meeting, but I thought I’d chime in with my HF setup at home:

I’m using a SGC 237 auto-coupler (sometimes wrongly called an “antenna tuner”) which is inside of a box attached to my chimney. I then have ~75’ of copper-clad-steel antenna wire in a delta loop configuration attached to the two terminals of the coupler. DC is driven up the coax via a bias-T, so no additional control cable is needed.

I’m able to work 80m-10m (with some issues on 10m due to the choke I used up in the bias-T … the SGC’s processor locks up at high power >50w, working on this problem). After selecting the band I want, I turn down the HF rig’s power to about 5 watts and transmit a tone with RTTY or a straight key until the SWR shows close to 1:1 and the ammeter on the power supply stops bouncing around, indicating that the SGC has found the proper inductance and capacitances to match the 50 ohm line to whatever impedance the loop presents at that frequency.

It is not the perfect setup: the radiation pattern of the loop varies greatly depending on frequency, so don’t expect this to be a beam. However, I’ve worked Russia, China, Europe, South America, etc. with it.

The price isn’t too bad, and it makes the most of your RF energy, no matter what it is attached to.
[edit: Having the auto-coupler at the antenna avoids burning up power in the coax due to the impedance mismatch causing reflections, which then turns part of your reflected RF into heat due to the inherent loss of coaxial cable.]