Tuesday, April 4, 2017

April Meeting

These are times of change. The most obvious is our new meeting location. It is much more comfortable than the last location from the point of view of space and acoustics. It is easy to be heard and understood, even without a microphone.

Field Day
The venue for Field Day 2017 has changed. Plans are to hold this year's event at the Kathleen Historical Society grounds. This facility is air conditioned, making it more comfortable for participants. For those not familiar with this location, you can visit their website at http://www.kahsatsocrum.com/#

Deadline for MIGS
The deadline for Member In Good Standing status was April 1. If you have not paid your dues, and still wish to be a club member you should contact Patrick to pay your dues.

Club Records Update
April is also the time of year when we look at club records. Mike Oliver and Bill Johnson will be making a push to make sure club records are up-to-date. If you have not made changes to the paper that was circulated during the meeting, you will be contacted by phone. If the phone number we have for you is not current, then we will contact you by email. If neither phone nor email is current you will simply be unreachable. This could be disadvantageous, so unless you chose to be a Stealth Member, you should contact the Secretary to update your records. :-)

Sign-in Sheets
As secretary I soon became aware that from day one, LARC has always had sign-in sheets at meetings and some events. No one ever questioned this, and to my knowledge no one has ever made use of them. I suppose on the outside chance you need an alibi for where you were on the first Monday of the month they might come in handy, but only if they are accurate. This is one reason we are considering the bar-code approach to attendance records, but there are others.

Generating bar-codes is not a big deal. If you wife is not also a ham, I created a bar-code with the suffix XYL for her. I also created a bar-code for you if you bring your son, YM or YL if you bring your daughter.

Other than being rather cool looking, and related to amateur radio in the sense that they were inspired by the Morse Code,bar-codes are a very practical and efficient way of generating attendance reports. A marked up sheet of bar-codes can be scanned into a worksheet in less than two minutes. But then what? For those interested, here is the workflow:
  1. Members circle their call sign
  2. Scan bar-codes into a spreadsheet - less than two minutes
  3. Port data to a table in a data base - about a minute
  4. Marry the scanned data with other information in the database, print out a hard copy, and generate a soft copy for publication. about five minutes. 
We are going to try this for a while. There have been suggestions made to affix a bar-code to the back of your membership card. This is very doable, but it requires that you carry your membership card in your wallet. The concept of bar-coded tattoos on the forehead was rejected out of hand. However, judging from the amount of ink we see these days, maybe sometime in the future. :-)

So what does a hard copy look like: (Please keep in mind that we are in the process of updating our records so if you paid your dues, or your information is not accurate, please be patient. Feel free to contact me with any updates and corrections.)





Membership
Call Sign Name LARC ARRL ARE SKYWARN
AA4HT Roberet (Rip) H. Van Winkle YES YES NO NO
AA4HTXYL Carolyn YES
AB1DX Oliver L. Richards NO NO NO NO
AE4RM Roger O. Meadows YES NO NO NO
K1DU Fredrick (Fred) A. Delaney, III NO NO NO NO
K2EUH Robert F. Foxworth YES YES NO YES
KA2BVC Alwin (AL) E. Pogue YES YES NO NO
KC2RMZ Brian Volz NO NO NO NO
KF4Q William R. Busbin YES YES NO NO
KG4PWF James (Jim) O Scott YES NO NO NO
KG4YNI Ernest (Ernie) H. Haynes, III YES YES NO YES
KG4YNIXYL Joan Haynes YES
KI4DNO Larry R. Walker YES NO YES YES
KI4ZMV William (Bill) Johnson YES YES NO YES
KJ4AFB Patricia E. Morris YES NO NO NO
KJ4AYU Victoria L. Walker YES NO NO NO
KJ4DSQ Roger D. Land NO NO YES NO
KJ4MJ Joy Gafford NO NO NO NO
KK4FEM Matthew R, Stevens YES YES YES YES
KK4YXR Franklin F. Fitzgerald NO NO NO NO
KM4BAO Robert Doherty YES NO NO NO
KM4CUG Debra (Debbie) M. Leahy YES YES NO NO
KM4STU Leon T. Holzer YES NO NO NO
KR4R Johnnie M. Ritter, Jr. NO YES NO NO
KT2T Michael (Mike) Wayne Oliver YES LIFE YES YES
N2TE R. Edward Marchese YES NO NO NO
N4ESS Richard (Rich) Kennedy YES LIFE NO YES
N4KWR Kevin W. Rought YES NO NO NO
N4PEG Margret (Peggy) Lang YES YES NO YES
N7CUC Samuel (Sam) H. Shaver YES NO NO NO
W4MQB Barbara S. Ritter NO YES NO NO
W4XDS James (Jim) Stewart YES NO YES NO
W4ZSC Albert (Al) P. Sheppard, Jr. YES YES NO YES
WX4AMS Andrew Stevens YES NO NO YE

What? You were there but you did not circle your name. Guess you will just have to make a point to do it next time. :-(

Guest Book
 In the past we have asked guests to sign in at the bottom of the sign in sheet. There wasn't much space to do this and we did not ask for their email. That has changed. We now have a sign-in book, with a place for email so that those who visit can keep up with club activities, and maybe even become members someday.

Testing Testing 1,2,3 Testing
  
Left to right, George, Thomas KN4BOE, Joh, KM4MTQ, Mark Tech, Duain TECH, A, and Richard. Jon Byrd is now Extra, Thomas Conner General, Mark Welch General, and Dwain Hoffman is a new Tech. Brandon Dye also tested, and is a new Tech.


 Below, Paul Pippin KG4EPU proudly holds his graduation certificate. He is now a General and free to roam the HF bands.Directly to Paul's right, and also in the picture above is Chris AA4CB a visiting VE from the East Pasco Amateur Radio Society.



Congratulations to all

Don't Forget -March For Babies Is Coming Up. 
See Bob To Volunteer
Bob presenting a first contact award to Thomas Connor. Congratulations Thomas.


Our Guest Speaker - Ben Henley
  Digital or analog? Itt all depends. The choice is yours.