Minutes
Meeting of January 7, 2006
Meeting called to order at 1224 hours at the Holiday Inn restaurant in Fort Washington, PA., chaired by Kevin Woolard, minutes by Bill Ferguson.
The following Board Members were present:
The following guests were present:
A list was passed around for the officers to correct/update their e-mail addresses, home address and contact telephone numbers.
Roger Purdy resigned his position as South Jersey representative, and recommended Bob Murdock WX2NJ to be considered as his replacement. Bob gave a brief summary of the various positions that he has held in several amateur radio groups and said he would serve in the position. A motion was made and voted upon making Bob Murdock the new SNJ representative.
There was a discussion regarding the 33cm. (900 mhz.) band plan. It was agreed to look closely at the SERA 25 mhz. bandplan which has been adopted by various coordination councils across the country. Bill Ferguson will check with the adjacent coordination groups and make them aware of our intent. This should be completed by summer 2006.
Jeff DePolo discussed with the webmaster a new method for someone to contact a board member without directly posting their e-mail address. There has been a lot of SPAM mail, believed coming thru the website where the addresses are obtained. The webmaster and Jeff will look at establishing a dedicated form to fill out on the website, where there is no e-mail addresses shown, simply fill out the name who you want to contact on the form, fill in the required info on the form and hit send. Hopefully this will put an end to the large amount of SPAM received by the board members.
There was a discussion on at least a quarterly database update for the website. There have been some issues with the e-mail (sending and receiving), between Jeff and Pete, getting the update information across but most of the time the data is lost. Jeff advised in 2005 he processed a total of 66 coordination requests, with 51 being approved.
A discussion regarding using electronic means to forward the coordination forms among board members vs. US Mail was held, Gene Pressler made a motion to purchase a document scanner (approx. $100) to be used by Kevin when he receives a new coordination request. Motion passed.
There was some discussion regarding changing the Post Office box. This may be done in the future, but only after a newsletter is published and mailed to all members. Gene Pressler will be heading up the newsletter.
Also a discussion was held about past and present dues. The treasurer will investigate the records and report back to the board. The treasurer also distributed a written report for the year 2005.
There was a short discussion regarding 4 repeaters in Monmouth County, NJ that were previously coordinated by ARCC, but now fall under Metro-Cor since their establishment. The data will be transferred to Metro-Cor by Jeff.
Jeff DePolo made a motion to permit the coordination forms to be scanned (by a document scanner) and sent electronically to ARCC. The forms would still require a handwritten signature. The webmaster will look into establishing a means to accept the forms VIA the website. The motion was approved. Jeff is also looking into providing some on line support programs, via the website, for ERP and HAAT calculations. Many of the forms received are either incomplete or have errors.
There was some discussion regarding an outstanding UHF coordination problem in EPA. Jeff brought the board up to date on the issues involved.
Motion by Gene Pressler and second by Roger Purdy to adjourn at 1427 hours.
Respectfully submitted.
Bill Ferguson WA3BXW
As filed Jan. 7th, 2006