Minutes of the East River Amateur Radio Club meeting.
February 5, 2007 Ryan’s Steakhouse Bluefield, VA.
http://www.erarc.com
The February meeting of the ERARC was opened at 658pm by George Dietrich KF4YGL, ERARC President. There were 15 members in attendance.
George asked if anyone had heard from Jerry Connelly KC8TES concerning his recent surgery. Gary Kadar N8GK had recently visited him and Gary reported that Jerry had come home just today and was doing well.
George asked Don Anderson WD8OOR for a repeater report. He said that ’49 was either working well or marginally recently maybe due to the weather. He said that he and Jay Belt K8CTI had gone to the mountain last weekend and checked the equipment out but could not find anything out of the ordinary.
Hooger Fisher W4OF, ERARC Treasurer, read the January minutes of which John Riddle N8RIG mentioned that Bob Hoge N8RIR, Mercer 911 director, told him that the center feed line on the G5RV antenna had broken off. Some discussion.
George asked Gary Kadar, ERARC ARRL VEC, about the upcoming Feb. 23 date for dropping the Morse Code requirement and how it affects testing, etc. Gary said that

*** THE ERARC ARRL VE TEST SESSION WILL BE THIS SATURDAY, February 10, 2006 AT 9AM AT THE MERCER COUNTY 911 CENTER ***.

  He said that if someone wanted to upgrade now, to wait until after Feb. 23 to do so. There is going to be another ERARC VE test session on Saturday, March 17 to allow people to upgrade and give the FCC time to work out any problems that they may experience.

The headphones from the VE team can now be given to the ERARC for use with Field Day, VHF contest, etc. since they’re not needed by the testing team now.
Bob Frazier WB8NRK, ERARC treasurer, gave his report. He purchased paper and ink for new VE tests and paid $18.02 for a phone bill.
George asked if the Boy Scout camp would allow K8WBS Bill Sowers’ crank-up tower to be placed at Camp Roland in Bastian, Va. Russel Taylor KC8GBE said that a proposal needed to written up and sent to the BSA Buckskin Council for review. Bill said that he would get Mona to write it up for him.
Bob Frazier still has the 147.225 repeater that he’s given to the Club and wondered what progress has been made. Gary Kadar said that the new 911 pre-fab building on Windmill Gap was in process of being put in place and that Bob Hoge said that we could have room on the tower and building. John Riddle said that the State was setting up a new 800mHZ intrastate trunking backbone system for statewide communications and that the new system was going in at the Windmill Gap site. Jay Belt mentioned that the 442.45 repeater should go with the 147.225 repeater when moved.
George asked Bill Sowers about his new Vista Operating System for Windows. 
Bill said that his older scanner would not work but he got all of his other peripherals working. He can’t get Echolink to work but then again, he couldn’t get it to work with XP either. His advice: wait a while until Microsoft releases their Service packs for Vista.
George asked that we think about June 23-24, 2007 Field Day.
John Riddle won the 50/50 drawing for the flower fund.
ARES net controls for February: 6th Lonnie Underwood, 13th George Dietrich, 20th Steven Stefancic, 27th Jerry Connelly.
The meeting was over at 731pm.
Submitted by Hooger Fisher W4OF, ERARC Secretary.
TO DO LIST:
1)	Bandpass filters for Field Day and VHF contest
2)	Equipment inventory with serial numbers for Bob for insurance reasons
3)	Multiband antenna, feed lines, etc. with Club’s Yaesu FT100, PS, etc.
4)	Bill Sowers’ crank up tower for Boy Scout Camp?
5)	Test/maintain HF, VHF, UHF equipment at the 911 Center.
6)	Go over repeater instructions in Club handbook for being current and 
complete. (add weather radio information, check 911 autodials, etc.)
7)	Jacks and adaptors for head phones for FD. External speakers also.
8)	Cathy Underwood KG4CTK would like us to look into possible funding via 
the Office of Homeland Security.
9) IN PROCESS: 147.225 repeater from Bob Frazier to ERARC.