Minutes of the East River Amateur Radio Club
January 6, 2003 Ryan's Steakhouse, Bluefield, VA. (www.erarc.com)
The January meeting of the ERARC was opened at 700pm by George Dietrich 
KF4YGL.  There were 13 members in attendance. George welcomed all.
Gary Kadar N8GK, John Riddle N8RIG and Tom Gordon WW8D recently went to a 
meeting of the Mercer Co. Emergency Services group, as representatives of 
the Club and were assigned to a "transportation committee". They have 
been charged with finding transportation options within the County in case 
of disaster, etc. and have been working on solutions for their assignment. 
The next meeting is on January 14.
Bob Frazier WB8NRK not present tonight with treasurer's report, probably 
due to the blizzard conditions outside tonight.
Hooger Fisher W4OF read the minutes of the past two meetings. He reported 
that Don Anderson WD8OOR had contacted him in November concerning getting 
"free" advertising for the Club meetings in WORLDRADIO Magazine. Hooger 
emailed them and received the following information: If we agree to pay them 
$65.00 per year, they will 1) Give us 8 "free" coupons for a one-year 
subscription to WORLDRADIO. 2) Will give a free subscription to our 
newsletter editor in exchange for having them on our newsletter mailing 
list. 3) Will give "some" coupons for free subscriptions to WORLDRADIO 
for door prizes for a hamfest, if we would like to do so. And in exchange 
for the above, 4) List our club in each monthly edition of WORLDRADIO by 
listing when and where we meet.  Discussion.  It was generally agreed that 
we'd not participate in this.
Update on the HF-internet radio system: Jay Belt K8CTI and John Riddle are 
still working on the system but are having trouble finding compatible 
software for the FT-100 HF radio-to-internet connections.
Jay Belt, Don Anderson and John Riddle, in the past several weeks have gone 
to the '49 site to manually place the battery-backup on charge due to 
power outages. It was mentioned then that we did need to get trickle 
chargers for the system so that "we" would not have to make the trip to 
the mountain so often, so that the batteries would not be overcharged and 
"boiled dry". As per our May 2002 minutes, we found that we had already 
voted to purchase two trickle chargers and Don Anderson said that he'd 
pick two up for the '49 and 444.45 sites.
Gary Kadar made a motion, seconded by Ed Viers KD4WOO, that we give Don 
and/or Jay the leeway to purchase additional parts (diodes, etc.) up to 
$100.00, for the installation of the chargers.
Mercer Co ARES net controls: 7th George Dietrich 14th Hooger Fisher 21st Tom 
Gordon 28th Ed Viers.
Discussed Field Day briefly.
There being no more business, the meeting was closed at 0735pm
Respectfully submitted, George "Hooger" Fisher 111, W4OF, Sec.