By Andrew, W5AWS
Mark, WA5MA, convened the monthly meeting of the Tulsa Amateur Radio Club in Room 2005 of Keplinger Hall at the University of Tulsa on Tuesday, 15 February 2022, calling the meeting to order at 1900 hours local time.
President, WA5MA, identified the club officers pre-sent at the meeting: First Vice President, Jack, W5JHC; Second Vice President, Bob, W5RAB; Sec-retary, Andrew, W5AWS; Trustee & Chief Operator, Gregg, W5GGW; Public Service Liaison Officer, Bart, N5TWB; Treasurer & Membership Committee Chair, Jerry, KE5PMK; and News Letter Editor, Richie, W5OKL.
WA5MA initiated round-robin introductions of mem-bers present.
WA5MA asked for questions about the January minutes. W5AWS said that the minutes contain an error stating that “…There is a free, throttled, version of Winlink available for testing; the unthrottled ver-sion license is $69….” For “Winlink” read “VARA”. Paul, WB5ANX, moved to approve the minutes as corrected. Lloyd, K5OSB, seconded.
WA5MA asked for questions about the financial re-port. Nothing heard. John, NJ5Z, moved to accept the financial report. Ray, K5CFY, seconded.
WA5MA said that he will order more club T-shirts when there are at least a total of ten requests entered on the order forms. There are separate order forms for short-sleeve ~$25, long-sleeve T-shirts ~$35, and hoodies ~$50. WA5MA is starting early in prepara-tion for Field Day.
WA5MA re-visted the TARC Net discussion last week about repeater frequencies and passed cards list-ing the frequencies to those who wanted one or more. This Universal Resource Locator (URL) has a list ofthe repeater frequencies in Tulsa County: https://w5ias.com/tulsa-county-frequencies/ This URL lists the repeater frequencies used in surrounding counties: https://w5ias.com/surrounding-counties/
WA5MA yielded the floor to Ray, K5CFY, who talked about the Green Country Ham Fest which will be held in the Claremore Expo Center on April 8 & 9. Visit this URL for more information: http://www.greencountryhamfest.org/index.php
K5CFY yielded the floor to Bart, N5TWB, who said that public service events in the near future are listed on the club FaceBook page. Paul, WB5ANX, asked whether this information would be available elsewhere. Jack, W5JHC, said that it would appear on the W5IAS web-site as soon as he sees it, under the “Events/Nets” tab.
K5CFY yielded the floor to WA5MA, who talked about repeaters and wondered whether a repeater footprint existed. Gregg, W5GGW, said that there was at one time and thought it could be up-dated. Some discussion ensued about malicious QRM. W5GGW strongly recommended not en-gaging with malicious actors on-air yet report, using the problem reporting page of the web-site: https://w5ias.com/repeater-systems/repeater-problem/ Later in the meeting, during the presen-tation by WB5ANX, Jeff, AE5ME, said that he uses an SDR to capture the entire traffic of a band using a computer to configure a buffer that saves traffic to memory, making it easy to rewind to a particular time. I, W5AWS, think we could use this technique to isolate malicious QRM on the Superlink and individual repeaters when coupled with automated DF, at least we could isolate the QRM to a particular repeater in the Superlink sys-tem without having to be present monitoring dur-ing the event.
WA5MA discussed the proposed W5IAS Weather Net on the Superlink an hour or so before advent of severe weather in the local area. W5GGW said that all reports are useful and should be prefaced by QST, QST, QST before making a short announcement of an observation. WA5MA said that the idea is for greater participation by operators in observation and making ground-truth reports. A small test is expected in the early hours of tomorrow morning by early-rising members of the club.
WA5MA yielded the floor to Paul, WB5ANX, who delivered an interesting overview of the scanner hob-by and its intersection with ham radio. W5GGW con-cluded that the easy way to do inexpensive explora-tion of scanning is to buy a cheap SDR USB receiver that plugs into a computer and can be used with free software. AE5ME’s comment about recording and rewinding band activity clearly intersects with isolating malicious QRM and also for use during emergencies to revisit critical communications. Automatic triangulation of transmissions could be helpful too. Dan, K5CAY, recorded the presenta-tion by WB5ANX; the video will eventually be available on the W5IAS web-site. The presenta-tion slides by WB5ANX can be found at this URL: https://w5ias.com/2022/02/15/scanners-ham -radio/
WB5ANX yielded the floor to WA5MA who concluded the meeting. We adjourned at 2020 hours.
Minutes respectfully submitted by, Andrew, W5AWS, Secretary.