Gold Coast Amateur Radio Association
General Membership Meeting
Meeting Minutes

1)  Call to Order

Melanie Fernandez (KJ4VCT)called to order the regular meeting of the Gold Coast Amateur Radio Association, Inc at 19:30 EDT (00:30UTC) on February 23, 2021 on ZOOM. A quorum was present with 22 members and 1 non-member.

2)  Secretary’s Report – Charlie Artner (KN4VDW)

a)    Minutes from February 23, 2021

Minutes from February’s meeting have been approved without objections.

3)  Treasurer’s Report – Erik Olmer (W4EJO)

Not much activity this month. We received 4 more member dues and 1 donation in the amount of $300 in support of the HF project. All monthly fees have been paid. Current balance is $6,295.64.

Anybody who has questions regarding their membership and their dues please send an email to gcaratreasurer@gmail.com

4)  Membership Chair’s Report – Joe McGee (NX4T)

Currently we have 49 members up to date with their dues. 16 are Lifetime and 4 family memberships. Unfortunately, not everybody of the 16 Lifetime members are active. According to Joe McGee (NX4T) 4 Lifetime members are definitely not active in the club anymore. The remaining 12 Lifetime members are probably another 4 who are not active anymore. Realistically we are down to about 40 active members or even less than that.

5)  VE Status Report – Jeff Stahl (K4BH)

No update regarding testing.

6)  Repeater Report – Ricky Eaton (KD4HDR)

Everything is working as it is supposed. Ricky Eaton (KD4HDR) is investigating the new repeater at John Knox. He is in touch with John Knox Admin regarding the questionable repeater but nobody at John Knox knows about this repeater (441.800MHz). We are going to start posting on the website about new repeater projects (remote receive site fund) and are going to ask our members for donations towards these projects. The upgrade will allow us to link all three repeaters together during net time and during Hurricane times. That includes FUSION and DSTAR.

7)  Web Admin Report – Charlie Artner (KN4VDW)

a)    Upcoming Web Projects

In future we will post more updates on ongoing projects. This will allow the club to bring new information to members faster and not only once a month in the general meeting.

b)   Membership Roster – Poll Results

We have sent out an email and asked our members whether to keep the membership roster. The result of that poll is posted below:

Option Votes Percentage
Yes, please continue the membership roster 18 48.65%
I don’t know 1 2.70%
Doesn’t matter to me 0 0.00%
I never used it, but don’t mind it being online 2 5.41%
I don’t mind it, but if possible, make it accessible to club members only. 12 32.43%
Remove the member roster 4 10.81%
Total 37

 

Jeff Stahl (K4BH) suggested for future surveys/polls to only send the survey/poll to those members who are up to date with their dues. A member who is not up to date with their dues should not have a say in what is happening in the club. To do that Charlie Artner (KN4VDW) will have to update the MailChimp mailing list with the current membership status or each email/member subscribed.

Charlie Artner (KN4VDW) is also currently in the process of updating the online roster to reflect the current status of the members and at the same time updating the contacts in Money Minder with addresses.

Jeff Stahl (K4BH) gave a brief report on Winlink and spoke about the plans to convert one of the 70cm repeaters to a Winlink Node. Winlink is extremely easy and quick to setup and is used as emergency communication in ARES/RACES. Winlink is also used over HF and VHF/UHF. The conversion may involve expenditure, but this is exactly what Jeff Stahl (K4BH) and Charlie Artner (KN4VDW) are researching right now. We possible may have to solicit donations for execute this project. Ricky Eaton (KD4HDR) suggested to use the 442.500 MHz repeater since this repeater is barely used by anyone.

Joe McGee (NX4T) mentioned that the videos from past presentations are not accessible on mobile devices. He found a link to read the presentation but does not see a link for the video. The issue was that the link to the video was to the right side off-screen and as soon as Joe McGee (NX4T) turned his phone into landscape mode the link was visible.

8)  Call for Old Business.

a)    Update on Hospital

This Item was not discussed in this meeting.

b)   Update on Memorial Plaques

This Item was not discussed in this meeting.

9)  Announcements

a)    SKYWARN Class March 20, 2021

Class was a success. We had almost 100% attendance. There is going to be another class on March 27. Please contact Carol @arrl.net. There were some technical problems in the last class and NWS apologizes for them. If anybody would like to attend the class on March 27 please contact Carol Sjursen (KJ4AWB) at KJ4AWB@arrl.net

b)   Emergency Volunteers

Carol Sjursen (KJ4AWB): Broward County is still looking for individuals who can help in the sheltering. Broward County offers the HAMs a lot of privileges such as free parks for field day and in exchange they want us to provide a HAM operator for each shelter in the county. There are over 30 shelters in the county. We desperately need HAMs to help.

Jeff Stahl (K4BH): This year there are more shelters due to the virus situation. So we have more shelters this year than we had two years ago and less HAMs due to some losses. One of the reasons why the Amateur Service exists is to provide emergency communications. This is exactly why we are here, and RACES is codified in Part 97 of our regulations. As a HAM when you serve in a shelter, you can bring your family.

c)    MailChimp

This Item was not discussed in this meeting.

d)   Upcoming Presentations

This Item was not discussed in this meeting.

10)      Vote on revised Bylaws

We did not vote on the Bylaws in this meeting.

11)      Speaker: Erik Olmer (W4EJO)

a)    What does it mean to be an EOC/Shelter Volunteer

b)   Questions and Answers

Presentation will be posted on the website.

12)       Adjournment

Melanie Fernandez (KJ4VCT)adjourned the meeting at 22:04 EDT (02:04 UTC).

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