2018-02-09 Board of Directors Meeting – JPL Amateur Radio Club

By Judy Greenberg, Jonathan Cameron

Present: Steve Townes WB4ILW, Jonathan Cameron KF6RTA, Jim Lux W6RMK, Bob Dengler NO6B, Lew Soloway AC6LS; and by phone: Chris Carson KE6ABQ, Walt Mushagian K6DNS, Dave Hodges KI6PMB. There was not a quorum since only two current club officers were present (the rest were on travel).

MEETING NOTES

Steve welcomed the attendees and provided an update on Club business, what we will be doing this year, websites, etc.

Regular Club updates presented

Secretary’s Report by Matt Bennett (unchanged, late on updating membership applications).
Treasurer’s Report by Chuck Sarture and Budget (Unchanged; no expenditures, balance $4507.75).
Monday Net Statistics (average participation in the mid/low twenties)

2018 Club Budget

The 2018 Club Budget was approved. Although only eight people actually voted, it was unanimous.

NOTA – NASA ON-THE-AIR

NASA W6VIO is on the air

Mike (K6ICS) has been on 40-, 20- and 17 meters. Not sure if Margaret (WA6OUD) is operating yet Steve signed on to Rob’s website, changed his password and is ready to go. Log sheets are up in the shack in B329 suitable for what we need to do.

There is no computer in B329 yet (Mike Tope may have put some computers up there, though they’re not there now (maybe someone took them to do something with them). Also Matt or someone needs to put some N3FJP software on them; so we’re waiting for that). In the interim, we will use paper and pen and then translate them later to ADIF files.

Steve is encouraging the group to get on NOTA.

Rob Smith’s full presentation from the meeting has been posted to the new website under NOTA (the link is toward the middle or maybe the bottom).

WORK IN PROGRESS

Steve reviewed recent accomplishments by the club including:

Getting the HF junction boxes set up at B329 and on the Mesa, as well as getting the hardlines connected
Installing an R7000 antenna on the Mesa to improve HF capabilities until the main antenna can be restored.
Setting up the patch panel in B329 so that we can connect our radios to various antennas.

JPL ARC Web Servers

Jonathan Cameron gave an update on the club website/email server. The old server is up but has a different host name (http://jpl-test.ampr.org) and IP address. The new club website is at:

https://jplarc.ampr.org

At the time of the meeting the new web server was working but was not accessible from inside JPL due to a JPL firewall issue.

Due to the way that JPL is blocking our web server, we cannot use our normal email exploder. So Jonathan set up Google Group for the club and transferred all current folks on the JPL ARC Email Exploder to the new email list. You can send email to the group by sending email to:

jplarc@googlegroups.com

Jonathan also added a page on the JPL ARC website for the JPL Mesh nodes.

FUTURE WORK

Steve outlined several things that he would like to see happen in the near future, including:

Jonathan and Steve were talking about purchasing a new HF radio and will start working on that.
Get a computer set up in B329 for logging, etc
Improvements and tuning for the temporary R7000 antenna on the Mesa.
Repair the inverted-V antenna on the Mesa
Prepare for Field Day
Although we would like to repair the main antenna on the Mesa, we will not be able to do that very soon because we need to determine status and likely get the antennas and rotor
off of the tower for repair.
Get control cables up to the mesa working and controlling something (antenna rotator, etc).
Set up a junction box and connect the cable runs for the tower near the tanks on the east end of the Mesa.
Various maintenance activities for our repeaters, including repeaters at Table Mountain.
Josh wants to think about a satellite station, including possibly digital modes.
Resolving the issue of the W6VIO calling newsletter. We may decide to go with articles on the website.

Steve will work over this list and update it for future meetings.