Minutes of the SARA Meeting

SARA MEETING MINUTES - March 14, 2007 (approved April 11, 2007)

Call to Order:  Meeting was held in the County Annex Building , 198 Neel Avenue , in Socorro, and called to order at 7:30 PM by President Vern Leavitt.

Announcements: 

• There will be an open house here at the County Annex Building on March 30.

• There will be a VE session on the last Saturday in April, the 28th .

 Approval of Minutes: Minutes of the February meeting were accepted, while noting that they had the VE session as tentatively being on March 31.  Welcome to guests Lis Spargo, Jon’s sister, and her husband JR, and our speaker Bob Balch.

Treasurer’s report: No checking account action at the bank, one check out to Dave Johnson for $37.54.  Balance is $3652.66 of which $280.08 is earmarked for TARA ; SARA’s own balance is $3372.58.

Memberships expiring:  Steve Grossman, Agnes, Glenn Mauger, and Dave Romero.

The program for the meeting was on the magma body underlying the Socorro area.

There was a note read from Keith Hayes regarding the fire danger season.

Old business:  

• the contract with the County was discussed and approved.

• There is online training available at www.nmtf1.org.

ARES/LEPC report: 

• Email from Jay Miller offered equipment for the EOC for a “Telepac” gateway which links AX.25 packet with internet.

• Ralph Clark of Valencia County ARES/RACES has an exercise planned for Saturday morning (March 17) and invites us to participate, using whatever frequencies we can connect to – 146.96, 145.49, or 146.70 repeaters, or 442.7, or simplex 146.56.

Jim Oty reported on the latest with Bob Sparks’s 70cm repeater, which Bob wants to sell – Jim has the specs and raised the question as to whether it is worth $600.  Glenn Mauger volunteered to check that out.

Kalman Oravecz noted that using a /R suffix in a repeater ID is not really in harmony with standard international usage; it could be taken to mean portable operation in Russia .  Just a standalone R is to be preferred.

The Hamfest will be October 27, decided by acclamation.

Elections are coming up and the nominating committee expects to convene at the weekly coffee meeting at McDonald’s on Saturday morning, the 24^th.

Dave Finley introduced a motion to grant life membership to Agnes, which passed.

Dave Finley also brought up the fact that the ARRL has club contests, aggregating individual scores from various contests.

Ed Wood noted that there was a recent plane crash north of Mora, and that the plane was found by hams and that all the search action was on the Megalink system.

Adjournment: Adjournment time was not recorded.

Eric Bear Albrecht W5VZB
Secretary