The Executive Committee of the CRES Amateur Radio Club met on
26 January 2004. The meeting was held at the Donatos Pizza at Brice
and Livingston in Reynoldsburg and was attended by President Jack
Kirkpatrick/KC8TM, Immediate Past President David Jeffords/K8ON,
Vice President Tricia Kovacs/KC8HIH, Sec/Treas Rob Stampfli/KD8WK,
Contest Coordinator Jerry Scott/K9RV, VE Liaison Art Grandle/KD8ZG,
Station Trustee Mike Rauh/NV7X, and members Mike Stansbery/WD8EBS and
Dave Woolf/K8RSP.
The meeting was called to order by KC8TM at 6:30 PM.
KC8HIH gave a report on her efforts to arrange activities for
the club. She had spoken with a local affiliate of Navy MARS
about possibly giving a talk, but this had not panned out. She
also had spoken with the proprietors, Steve and Larry, of the TV
Museum in Hilliard and they indicated they would be happy to have
us out to visit their museum. Additionally, Al Mecozzi/WA8LBZ had
sent Tricia mail suggesting having ICOM's district manager talk to
the club. He apparently has an interesting presentation about ICOM
radios and his travels on a recent DXpedition.
The executive committee decided to hold a club field trip for those
interested in seeing the TV museum on the morning of Saturday,
February 21st, with breakfast beforehand at the Cracker Barrel at I-70
and Rome-Hilliard Road. Tricia will coordinate this. Additionally,
she will contact ICOM and see if the District Manager is available
to speak with us on or around Monday March 22nd, and arrange a
suitable location. If possible, we will schedule our 1st quarter
meeting around this event.
The next issue concerned bringing the control ops list for the
club's repeater up to date. In prior email among excomm members,
it had become apparent that our W8ZPF/R control op list is out of
date and in need of updating. K8ON pointed out that the Station
Trustee is technically responsible (per FCC regulations) for specifying
who the control ops are. WD8EBS suggested establishing a standing
committee on repeater operations for this and other repeater
concerns. It was pointed out that K8ON had designated a committee
consisting of KD8ZG, K8RSP, and KB8DEO at the December regular
meeting, but the scope of that committee is limited to resolving
the link problems. After some discussion, it was agreed to form
a committee with the responsibilities of:
+ Determining the club policy for appointing control ops.
+ Determining the rules and requirements to be adhered to
by control ops.
+ Taking responsibility for any necessary repeater
maintenance items.
+ Taking responsibility for determining an alternate site
for the repeater in the event it becomes necessary to
relocate the machine from its current location.
Jack appointed NV7X as chair of this committee with additional
members to be appointed by NV7X from the membership, based on a
specific expertise for a task and a mutual interest.
The sense of the executive committee is that it is in the club's
best interest to keep the repeater at its current site as long as it
is feasible to do so. It is felt that we will know more about the
viability of the current site by this fall.
K8RSP and KD8ZG reported that they are working on adding the
ability to put the repeater in full PL mode, per the decision
springing from at the December regular meeting. Once these
modifications, or at least the design, are complete, K8RSP agreed
to put together a talk about repeater operations, explaining the
changes made and describing the repeater functions available to the
members. Additionally, he agreed to give a talk to control ops
once that issue has been resolved.
K8ON asked about the status on the remaining vacuum tubes owned by
the club. K8RSP responded that about half of the tubes had been
sold to date. KD8ZG proposed selling the rest on EBay. It was
pointed out that individual sales would require a lot of work, so
it was further proposed that the tubes be sold as a block with a
minimum bid of 5-10% of their combined list prices. K8RSP was given
the go-ahead to proceed, with the proviso that, if he felt he could
get better money for some tubes separately, those tubes could be
taken out of the lot and offered for sale individually or in a
separate lot. KD8ZG agreed to help with the logistics of the
auction.
K8ON pointed out that a FY2003 audit of the Treasurer's records
had not been done, and it was a recommendation of the FY2002
audit committee that annual audits be conducted. KD8WK indicated
he preferred regular audits, but he took no position on whether
they should be conducted annually. KD8ZG motions and K8ON seconds
that the FY2003 audit be waived. The motion carried, with KD8WK,
as Treasurer, abstaining from the vote.
KC8TM suggested placing the year-end Telhio statement on the web.
KD8WK responded that he would prefer not to make this degree of
financial information available on the web, as there is no way to
limit it to only club members, and it was inconvenient to do so,
as he only had paper copies. He produced the statement, which
Jack inspected, and reiterated that recent Telhio statements would
be available at all club excomm and general meetings for inspection.
Next, the excomm committee spent a fair amount of time discussing
the club's organization. KC8TM felt that there was a good chance
the club could get a 501c3 classification (charitable non-profit)
if the club decided to incorporate. Jack is affiliated with a
501c4 (non-charitable non-profit) corporation. Advantages appear
to be that such an arrangement might better protect club members
if the club were sued. An incorporated entity might also carry
more weight with the new owners of 6200 East Broad Street. However,
incorporating would require expending some money and require more
yearly paperwork. In the end, the excomm decided to meet again
prior to the general meeting (on March 8th) in order to give us
time to investigate this further and make a recommendation. Jack
said he would take the constitution and develop recommendations
of changes that would be needed should the club decide to
incorporate. (Any such changes would have to be approved by the
membership under the document's current rules.)
KD8WK reported the club had made $144.94 in interest last year.
He indicated he had emailed Art Kamlet/K2PZH and asked whether
this amount required a tax return filing. Art responded that
it was probably OK to ignore it and not file a return.
KD8WK also questioned whether the club wished to purchase a
space again at the Dayton Hamvention, as we did last year. The
consensus is that there was little club equipment left to sell
and we should not purchase a space this year.
KD8WK then gave the Treasurer's Report: The club has $4340.04
in the Telhio accounts plus $2106.84 in CDs, and $371.09 in
the cash account. Someone inquired about the number of paid-up
members. Rob estimated the number low (24) at the meeting.
In actuality, we have 28 paid-up members, plus 8 members from
last year who have not yet renewed. Generally, prior-year
members are not considered in arrears until after the first
general meeting of the year.
One excomm member reported having trouble accessing the Secretary's
web page from a RoadRunner account. KD8WK indicated RoadRunner
was a particularly difficult ISP for sending email to, and they
had blocked CRES-ARC email on several occasions. It is not known
whether they are blocking access to our web pages or, if so, why.
In any event, for redundancy, there are two independent web sites
with the club minutes, membership information, and other
administrative data, and which contain essentially the same
files. They are:
and
WD8EBS reiterated his contention that the club should have a
budget. KD8WK agreed to take a first cut at such a document and
disseminate it prior to the next excomm meeting for review.
Finally, the excomm discussed ways of expanding the activities of
the club into other, new, areas. K8RSP indicated he could approach
the Pickerington High School about sponsoring a ham club or some
other ham activity there. This might also provide a foot in the
door for a place to relocate our repeater, should that eventually
become necessary. WD8EBS pointed out that members interacting
with kids might have to submit to a background check. It was also
suggested that the club could sponsor a class for aspiring hams.
The meeting was adjourned at 8:30 PM.
Respectfully submitted,
Rob Stampfli
CRES-ARC Secretary-Treasurer