Month: November 2017

MINUTES OF THE NAPIER AMATEUR RADIO CLUB

Meeting on Wednesday 1 November 2017 at the Clubrooms 123 Latham Street

Chair: Dave ZL2MQ, the meeting started at 7:30 pm.

Present: Revell ZL2SS, Peter ZL2CD, Dave ZL2DW, Wally ZL2MO, Paul ZL2HB, Blue ZL3TT, Errol ZL2IT, Stan ZL2ST, Rob ZL2US, Stu ZL2XC and Karl ZL1TJ.

Apologies: ZL2VM.

Minutes of previous meeting: Read and confirmed to be correct: ZL2MO, ZL3TT.

Arising: Dave ZL2DW: waiting to hear back from Masterton Radio Club regarding numbers for the proposed second run Pool Q 2 band antenna. Whanganui may also be interested.

Dave 2MQ: costing comes to $45 plus freight if any.

Dave 2DW: the annual Waipawa meeting and dinner was another success, about 20 attended.

Dave 2MQ: all equipment offered on Trade me was sold for fair prices, the club’s coffers benefited.

Correspondence: Accounts from Napier City Council for annual ground rental, account from Radio Spectrum Management for licence fees. Email correspondence regarding the proposed hamfest and possible presentators.

Finance: To be presented at the AGM following the monthly meeting.

General Business: Dave 2DW: The annual end of year joint branches dinner will be held at the Napier RSA restaurant 0n Saturday 24 November starting 6pm. Bookings required asap.

Also the next Branch 13 meeting will be on the 22nd and include both the AGM and the annual home brew contest. This year will also see a repeat of the popular ‘Summer wine’ bus trip and lunch. All welcome to join, talk to Dave 2DW or Rob 2US.

Revell 2SS: did an Internet search of amateur radio club buildings and signage on these in connection with proposed added signs for the NARC building. Revell printed a number of these off for us to check and get inspired and hopefully persevere with the project.

Dave 2DW opened a brief discussion on next year’s (7 April) Hamfest. Proposed to follow previous format with Friday night registration and meet up and Saturday dinner at the RSA or similar. Dave 2MQ to make firm bookings, also check out catering etc.. Paul 2HB suggested another attempt is made to find a commercial sponsor. Karl to check out. The speakers to be invited and other details will be discussed at this month’s committee meeting (21st).

Stan 2ST reported briefly on last weekends CQ worldwide CW contest.

The meeting closed at 8:05 pm.

It was followed by the AGM after which two contenders presented construction projects:

Stu ZL2XC, a microprocessor (Arduino) based device with touch screen control, communicating with the transceiver, driving two servo motors and band switch relays to automatically adjust the antenna tuner to a perfect match. The device being in the prototype stage looked vey promising and Hi Tech and we are looking forward to see the device fully operational.

Errol ZL2IT presented a truly innovative idea: a water cooled 50 MHz 250 W linear amplifier. Why water cooled? Because large heatsinks are expensive and the shed happened to yield a suitable car heater core. And just for the fun of it. Again, about 90% completed, it looks promising and we are looking forward to see the finished product.

The vote for the most innovative project went to Errol’s amplifier with a very small margin.

Karl ZL1TJ Secretary NARC.