Zero Beat 06 2016

We will be at the police precinct for our June meeting. The precinct is at 6850 Appling Farms Pky.

Mary and I will be at a family dinner and wine tasting on Thursday night next week and I will have to miss the meeting. It will be the first meeting I have missed in several years. Dan Lasley will take notes for me. I will send out the Zero Beat early which I am preparing ahead of time, so if it is a little “off” complain like hell to Dennis and Dan.

I am also apologizing ahead of time for the length of this news letter. It is longer than normal but I try to only include extremely important stuff. This month we have more than normal.

June Meeting Topic

The main June topic is the Dayton Hamvention. Dennis took lots of pictures and will have a slide show of the Hamvention.

Dennis and Rick will also have the latest information on Field Day. The Nashoba Club is hosting this Field Day in Germantown so all we have to do is go and enjoy it.

Field Day is our July meeting so we will not have a July meeting. Our next meeting will be a cookout on Friday night August 12 at the pool at our clubhouse [2417 Lacosta]. This will be a joint meeting and all hams in the area are invited. It is a social meeting. We plan to have Arkansas Round Steaks and Mississippi Tube Steaks along with Drinks and Chips.

Heliax

We still have a lot of 1 5/8 Heliax. I would like to get it out of my yard. If you want a piece contact me and we can fix you up. It has commercial flanged fittings and our current plan is to remove these, clean them up, and sell them on Ebay. To use the Heliax you would need to get N fittings and these are a little pricey but available on Ebay.

Dues

Please pay your dues for 2016. We need these to support our activities. There is a membership application on the web page and at the meeting. If there have been any changes in your status please fill one of these out and send it in with your dues. Art Barnett is the treasurer and official dues collector and it is best to give it directly to him or mail it to our mailbox. PO Box 343358 Bartlett, 38134

LeBonheur Hospital Support.

LeBonheur has notified us that over the past several years we have raised over $25,000 dollars and we will be listed on the donor wall inside the hospital. Attached is a thank you letter from Meri Armour the CEO of LeBonheur. I have attached a photo of Treasurer Art Barnett presenting the check to Rick Kanschat for LeBonheur. In addition, former Director Ron Rubin and his wife Janet Souza [current members] have made a $100 dollar personal donation which puts the total raised to over $4000.00 this year. Janet has helped us out the past couple years by sending out the club email notice letter for FreeFest.

Thanks to all the hams that purchased and helped sell FreeFest raffle tickets. We wanted to help LeBonheur and it looks like we have.

Quick Dayton Update

Dennis will talk about Dayton and have some slides from Hamvention. We sold some more club stuff and had a ton of visitors come by. Lots of Memphis folks came by and visited. Ron Rubin and his wife Janet Souza came by and visited with us and it was good seeing old friends. Ron and Janet currently live in the Philadelphia area.

Kenwood announced a new HT that will be coming out late summer or early fall. It will include D-Star Capability. The price was in the $600 range and I know there will be a long line to buy them at that price.

You will hear rumors about me booking a cheap “flea bag” hotel at Dayton and these are all false. Just because the lobby was torn up and the roof had a large blue “Harbor Freight” tarp on it was no reason to denigrate the facility. The buckets in one of the rooms to catch the rain leakage from the roof were more than adequate for the job and none overflowed. A couple members of the group complained of bite marks and tried to blame it on bed bugs or such. It was telling to me that the only two who complained of bite marks shared a room. The rest of us had no problems. The hourly rate was quite high but I was able to negotiate a great daily rate.

Many vendors were talking about FreeFest and swear they are coming back next year. Richard Lenoir at MTC was adamant about it. He has bought a large fold out trailer and tent to use at hamfests and wants to be outside. Time will tell, but this could be a win-win.