We had a great turnout at the December club meeting - doing a quick head count we had 30 people in attendance for some good BBQ and to hear some exciting news about the club.
First, I withdrew my name from the nomination for the club President position. As some of you know I am already the President of the Missouri Repeater Council and it had been brought up that it would look bad if I won the election and was the President of Nixa who has the most repeaters of any club in the state. The more I thought about it the more I was concerned that it might not portray the positive image on the club that we have worked hard to keep. Therefore, Shawn Roesslet, KE0JGI, will remain on through acclimation as President of the club.
As you know the Treasurer role has been open for about a year with the other club officers splitting those duties. I did volunteer to fill that spot if they felt comfortable appointing me to fulfill the remaining term for that position. Therefore, I will be acting as Treasurer for the club - the only officer position I had yet to fulfill - and I’m looking forward to being more involved as our youngest graduates from High School this spring. He is going into accounting and claims he can teach his OM some tricks with Excel and Quicken.
In other news, Shawn, KE0JGI, applied for and received a grant from the Nixa Community Foundation for close to $2200 to replace the 6.0 dBd gain DB-224E antenna we installed in 2003 on the 145.270 with an 8.5 dBd gain Comprod 874F-70TM antenna. The repeater is now used by Christian County ARES for their weekly net as well as for severe weather spotting in Christian County. The repeater performance has been degrading the last several years and we are counting on the new antenna system to get us back to where we were previously and even better with the higher gain. Also at this site Jeremy, KC0UJZ, of Verizon let me know they replaced the 48vdc battery plant last week and shut off both 3G cabinets of equipment so our power source will have a longer life during power outages. We plan to take advantage of the backup power and move our Quantar repeater from a 120vac to a 48vdc power supply and be grid independent for normal operations in 2023.
The other hot topics regarding club repeaters revolves around the Crane 442.150 - we found it to be 6.332 kHz off frequency on transmit while receive is right on frequency. James, KB0NHX, has seen this one time before but it was another person’s repeater and they opted to replace it instead of troubleshoot. We are looking for a Motorola MSF-5000 CXB Uniboard for the UHF repeater currently.
We also talked about the 53.270 and the Queen City Digital projects - we don’t have any updates but will try to get an update by the January meeting for everyone. As of now, it’s still a go but the timeline is not set yet.
Randy, KC0UKB, and James, KB0NHX, gave everyone some unexpected and neat information about the club’s new website that is under construction. We hope to unveil it at the January club meeting and the designer is planning on being at the meeting. He is a college student that attends MSU majoring in web design. He was discovered by Jim, KC0IYI, when he worked the same rest stop at the Tour de Bass. He is very interested in amateur radio and from what we’ve seen so far it is very neat! What is really cool is one of his scholarships requires him to have a certain number of volunteer hours for a 501c3 and we worked with his sponsor to allow him to use his education and volunteer requirements to count toward his scholarship hours - a win for us and him both! The online membership process is going to be great as once you pay you will get a receipt automatically and it will add you to that year’s roster on the website. We are super excited to give our website a huge refresh!
Shawn, KE0JGI, gave us the numbers for the Hamfest and we had 218 people in attendance and after all bills were paid we netted $1543 in profits to go into the SMLRS fund to support the link system which is generally enough to replace an antenna or pay for a tower climb. It can also be used to replace or buy replacement parts for repeaters like the 442.150 in Crane we spoke about earlier. We greatly thank all that came to the Hamfest and for the Hamfest committee for their hours planning this year’s event.
Lastly, we are working with the Aurora club and SMARC along with other clubs in the region to hold a new years net on the 145.270 Nixa repeater. Exact time will follow soon. The goal is to get a lot of people on the air that night and checking into various non-linked repeaters in the region. We hope you will support this effort and fire up your rig on New Years Eve this year - when we have a schedule we’ll let you know. Anyone that wants to be net control should email me asap - it will be first come / first served for NCS for the net.
If you would like to continue running the NARC net on Thursdays at 7:30 pm or if you would like to give being a Net Control a try, now is the time to let us know - it’s just a once per month obligation and we send out the announcements for the net so all you have to do is simply read them and run the net. The repeater linking is all automatic so there are no crazy codes to enter or to worry about. Again, email officials@nixahams.net and let us know if you want to run the net one night a month in 2023.
73 & we’ll see you back at the fire station for our January 2023 meeting!
James Adkins, KB0NHX
Treasurer & Repeater Trustee
Nixa ARC, Inc (K0NXA)
