MINUTES OF THE NAPIER AMATEUR RADIO CLUB
Meeting on Wednesday 2 August 2017 at the Clubrooms 123 Latham Street
Chair: Dave ZL2MQ, the meeting started at 7:30 pm. Dave welcomed visitor Ron ZL4RMF.
Present: Revell ZL2SS, Peter ZL2CD, Dave ZL2DW, Wally ZL2MO, Paul ZL2HB, Blue ZL3TT, Errol ZL2IT, Lamont ZL2ALK, Ron ZL2RMF and Karl ZL1TJ. Apologies: ZL2VM, ZL2XC, ZL2US.
Minutes of previous meeting: Read and confirmed to be correct: ZL3TT, ZL2HB.
Arising: Dave 2DW, the Branch 13 auction was another success, one Branch 25 member coming away with an exceptional bargain. (ZL2MO)
Dave 2MQ: the Club’s beacons are now soak testing on the workbench at my QTH.
Correspondence: email correspondence outwards: Break-in advert seeking Hamfest papers. Inwards: response from Debby NZART regarding our request to present a united front to energy retailers, mail from Peter Raeburn regarding his late (SWL) father’s receivers and a bank statement.
Finance: Term deposit was rolled over for 6 months. Subs paid by ZL3TT, received $20 from 2HB for surplus TV signal strength meter.
General Business: Errol: came across an interesting concept: Offset attenuator used for desensitizing receivers while direction finding (e.g. foxhunting). Google this for more information.
Consequently a discussion on ‘having a go’ at a DF excercise was discussed. Perhaps one of the Club’s Sunday pm get togethers, finishing with a bbq at the clubrooms? To be followed up.
Blue: it would appear that the Napier City Council supports the idea of club rooms being made more prominent with the installation of AA style signs. This may be suitable for NARC? Blue to check this out. Dave 2MQ reminded us that some form of sign on the street site of the clubrooms was discussed before and needs to be followed up.
The meeting closed at 8pm.
Show and Tell:
Started off by Dave 2DW, Postage Stamp sized section aerial revisited. Dave showed with drawings and photographs the improvements to his horizontal square loop antenna.
Addition of a balun and common mode choke and a loading coil at the corner opposite the feed point made the aerial now use-able at all bands except 160m.
Errol presented a recent addition to his electronic design and build arsenal: free software to design printed circuit boards. This relates to the demonstration of similar software by Dave 2MQ few weeks ago. The “easyeda” program is as the name says easy to operate and has a huge component library. Find it through Google.
Ron ZL4 RMF, from Dunedin, presently looking after Rob 2US’s place, told us a bit about himself.
He calls himself a 160 meter man and made a strong case for having a go at this section of the band. Ron is listening most night at 9pm, 1850 KHz.
Ron also mentioned the very useful Australian government website where propagation can be checked quickly and easily anytime of the day: http://www.sws.bom.gov.au/
Karl ZL1TJ Sec. NARC.