Zero Beat 01 2015

Mid-South Amateur Radio Association

http://www.maraonline.org/

Next meeting

Thursday January 8, at 7:00 pm

At the Appling Station Police Precinct

The Police Precinct is at 6850 Whitten Bend Cove. See the web page for a detailed map.

We hope all of you had very good Christmas and New Year’s celebration and our hope is that all of you will have a great 2015.

Program

We will be back at the police precinct this month.

Our program will be to discuss the plans for the current year, get input from the membership on programs and events you would like to see, and set a proposed budget for 2015.

Christmas Party

The Christmas party at Coletta’s was a success despite the slow service problems. A few over 60 people attended. Dennis Foster has visited with Christina Coletta and discussed the service problems in detail. They were aware of the issues and offered a sincere apology. We will be very mindful of this for the 2015 party.

Repeater Upgrades and Status

We have installed the 145.210 Kenwood repeater, power supply, amplifier, and duplexer in the rack at LeBonheur. What is left to do is put the roof mount together, pull the Heliax® up the raceway, and install the antenna on the roof mount on the roof. We can use some help when we get ready to do this and we will send out a notice. All we are waiting on is the worst possible weather in January or February to work on the roof. Ice, sleet or snow would be truly excellent but bitter cold with a 25-30 MPH wind would also work.

Sorting Party in January

We need to have a sorting party at the church where our stuff is stored. We plan to take some repeaters and other stuff to the Jackson hamfest in January to see if we can sell it. The Mexicans got into the room somehow and piled all the stuff into a couple of offices so we will need to re-sort the stuff and get some photos of the stuff we aren’t going to take.

Pat Lane also donated a large quantity of tubes that are “new old stock”. We need to sort and inventory these. So we know exactly what is there.

We are thinking a pizza party one night to sort and index. We’ll send out a notice.

FreeFest 2015 - April 11, 2015

The initial notice for FreeFest was sent out in mid December and we are already nearly 60% full. This is ahead of last year. I will not start assigning tables or arranging them until after the Jackson hamfest in January as I will need to talk with a few folks there. If you need or want tables let me know via email as soon as possible. Also please pass the word on nets or in your travels.