Minutes - YRARC General Membership Meeting 2016-09-06

Meeting held in the Sharon Temperance Hall - Called to Order at 19:30 by Chris VE3NRT. Total members and guests attending: 37 including 4 guests attending.

1. Welcome & Introductions – Chris VE3NRT
   
2. Adoption of Minutes from 2016-06-07 general meeting (AGM). Moved by Jack VA3UU, seconded by Rick VA3VO. Carried
   
3. General Announcements – Chris VE3NRT. The club needs a new projector to replace the existing ageing projector. The estimated cost for a new projector is $1000. We welcome suggestions on where to purchase a new or good used projector. Please contact Chris VE3NRT.
   
4. New Board of Directors – Chris VE3NRT. Chris welcomed new directors John VE3IPS and Rick VA3VO to the board. Continuing directors are Chris VE3NRT (president), John VA3JI (treasurer), Geoff VA3GS (hamfest and meetings), Steve VE3UT (repeaters and field day), Barry VA3LLT (membership), Eric VE3EB (public service), Doug VE3ATP (repeaters) and David VA3DCY (secretary). John VE3IPS is the new vice president and Rick VA3VO is the new property manager. A new responsibility is media and communications, shared by Chris VE3NRT and John VE3IPS.
   
5. Treasurer’s Report – John VA3JI
   
   • Opening Balance 2016/07/01 [available to members upon request to Secretary]
     
   • Income: Membership (2016) $25.00
     
   • Honorarium (Aurora street festival) $500.00
     
   • Hamfest vendor fees $111.00
     
   • Refund advance for AGM, Field day food $253.05
     
   • Expenditures: Trailer insurance $811.00
     
   • Field day (gas, etc.) $171.19
     
   • Hamfest – first deposit $1165.00
     
   • Hamfest door prizes $99.07
     
   • New lock for the storage container $37.58
     
   • Bank charges for PayPal $1.61
     
   • Closing Balance 2016/04/01 [available to members upon request to Secretary]
     
   • Moved the treasurer's report be adopted, by John VA3JI, seconded Doug VE3VS. Carried.
     
   • Additional treasurer's update. Tonight we have collected memberships for 16 members at $25 each ($400) and 1 family membership at $30 ($30) for a total of $430.
     
6. Public Service Report – Eric VE3EB
   
7. Upcoming public service events include:
   
   • Sunday, Sept 18, 2016 Sharon Temple needing 3-4 volunteers
     
   • Sunday Oct 02, 2016 needing 9 -14 volunteers.
     
8. Field Day Report – Steve VE3UT
   
   • Steve summarized the past field day results with the following highlights (comparing the results from the last 4 years, 2013 to 2016).
     
   • This year we had the highest number of QSOs 903. CW QSOs 5 better than last year and the highest ever 537. Digital QSOs lowest of the last 4 years 103 (unfortunate. Satellite QSOs highest ever 47. Second highest attendance in 4 years. First time in 4 years that we missed the W1AW bulletin.
     

   Year	CW	Phone	Digital	Points*	Bonus	Total#	Participants
   2013	266	732	242	1748	1190	3496	69
   2014	313	555	309	1799	990	3598	61
   2015	532	524	144	1876	1100	2976	53
   2016	537	903	103	2183	1290	5656	63

   • *Multiplier for power NOT included
   • #Includes Bonus points and QSOs x power multiplier
   • Brian VE3IBW and Ken VE3LRK were the joint recipients of the Melted Coffee Pot award for Field Day 2016. Brian accepted the award in Ken's absence.
     
9. EmComm Report – John VE3IPS/Chris VE3NRT. There is an EmComm meeting this Thursday September 8.
   


10. Repeater Report – Steve VE3UT
    
    • The 100w PA will be installed this week at the VE3YRC-V site to replace the temporary PA.
      
    • The link antenna for VE3YRA at the VE3YRC-U site will be replaced with a new yagi and the repeater power will be lowered.
      


11. Repeater Report – Chris VE3NRT
    
    • New gateway software for VE3YRK (D-Star) has been installed with help from Keith VA3YC.
      
    • The IRLP link has had a faulty SD card in the RaspberryPi. A new card and image has been installed and has been working for 1 week.
      


12. Meeting Report – Geoff VA3GS. Geoff needs suggestions for future meetings. Should the January 'junk in the trunk' continue (yes or no) or should it be replaced with a series of '10 minute show and tells'?
    


13. Hamfest Report – Geoff VA3GS. W. e need MANY volunteers, for setup on Friday, the event on Saturday morning and for teardown after the event is over. Community service hours for high school students are available when helping with this event.
    


14. Basic Course – Geoff VA3GSA new ham class is being offered in cooperation with the Maker's Lab at the David Dunlap Observatory in Richmond Hill, starting soon with the final exam on November 5.
    


15. Name Tags – Doug VE3VS. Anyone wanting to purchase new name tags, see Doug. The cost is $9 for tags with a pin and $12 for tags with a magnetic back.
    


16. The Harvey Bell Award for 2016 was presented to Rob VE3RQB.
    

• Break from 20:25 to 20:40
  
• Guest Speaker – Don VE3IXJ.
  

Don spoke about DMR basics. DMR (Digital Mobile Radio) originated with commercial radios built by Motorola, but it is an open system. Commercially available units are either VHF or UHF, since commercial users typically use only 1 band. Tier 1 radios are simplex only. Tier 2 radios are duplex and suitable for repeater use. The Tier 2 radios also have 2 time slots available, allow 2 separate conversations to be held allowing two simultaneous transmissions on the same frequency. Time slot 1 is 27.5 ms long followed by a 2.5ms space, and time slot 2 is 27.5 ms long followed by a 2.5ms space (60ms).

Time Groups could be selectable from Local or regional groups such as a provincial group, Canada-wide group, North America or World-Wide-English. DMR radio usage has been slow to catch on, because of the high price of commercial equipment, however the Tytera TYTMD-380 costs as little as $95 US including programming cable and software. To use the radio, a user number is required, which is programmed into the radio. The name and call sign information is transmitted and displayed on the receiving radio.

When programming a DMR radio, regardless of manufacturer, they each require a code plug that carries information about repeaters – analog and DMR – frequencies, Tx & Rx offset and for DMR the various talkgroup information, scanning functions, as well as simplex channel information, DMR and analog. A DMR zone is one of a number of parts of a code plug. The zone may identify various talk groups for a particular repeater, or several repeaters, and can be a mix of DMR repeater talkgroups, analog repeaters or a group of simplex channels analog and or DMR.

Rob VE3RQB accepts the 2016 Harvey Bell Award from Chris VE3NRT