MINUTES OF LIDXA INC. MEETING—
January 18, 2002
Location:
Polytechnic University, Farmingdale, N.Y.
The LIDXA President, Marty, NN2C, called the meeting of January 18 to order at 8:10 PM. Marty opened up the first meeting of the LIDXA for the New Year, and welcomed all members back after the holiday season. Members present (per sign-in on the blackboard) included K2MFY, N2TU, KB2HK, KE2LJ, N2DXJ (and XYL), NN2C, N2QW, W2RL, N2KA, and W2FGD. In addition, the club welcomed guest George, WB2ZTH, to this meeting.
In terms of DX, specific activities were mentioned:
·
The DXpedition to
South Thule Island in the South Sandwich Island group has just come up, using
the callsign VP8THU. This
multi-national team will be on VP8/S for five days. They will then travel up to South Georgia (VP8/G) for about two
weeks.
·
An operator from South
Orkney Island using the callsign LU1ZA, has been heard.
·
It was mentioned that
March might be a very interesting DX month.
The first DXpedition to the new DXCC country, Ducie Island in the
Pitcairn Island group, has been planned.
Also, a team headed by YT1AD is hoping to get written permission to put
North Korea on the air. The only other station
that has been operating from North Korea, as P5/4L4FN, hopes to get written
permission soon. This operator has a
very weak signal on the East coast of the USA.
·
Members were reminded
that the ARRL DX Contest was coming up for the third weekend in February (the
16–17th), CW mode, and the first weekend in March (the 2–3rd), SSB mode. With the solar flux recently reaching over
200, it is expected that the conditions for the contest would be very good.
Marty mentioned that about one dozen members with
their XYLs showed up at the Holiday Party meeting on December 6, at the Sweet Hollow Diner. The food was excellent and a good time was
had by all participants.
Starting the business portion of tonight’s meeting was the approval of the November 16 meeting minutes. These minutes were prepared in advance by the club’s secretary, Ed, K2MFY. In addition, thanks to the efforts of KE2LJ, Pat, these minutes appear in the LIDXA web site: http://www.qsl.net/lidxa.
Marty
commented that he had not heard anything new on the status of Millennium Tower Corporation’s
application for a tower construction permit with the Town of Babylon. The company had filed the necessary papers
with the Town, and it was expected that a permit would be issued since there
are other towers in the area. In the
meantime, the LIDXA has use of the Grumman repeater, on 146.745 MHz. During our Sunday night nets. The LIDXA also then switches over to our own
LIDXA frequency at 147.300 MHz.
The LIDXA Treasurer,
Russ, W2RL, presented a Treasurer’s Report.
Current balance is at $1569.10. The membership were reminded that dues
for the 2002 calendar year were due.
Checks in the order of $25 should be given to Russ at this meeting or
forwarded to his call book address.
The
membership were reminded that the next “Ham Radio University” will be held in
the Babylon Town Hall Annex, this coming Sunday, January 20, 2002, starting at
9AM. This
year the forums have been expanded and new forums have been added. There will be twenty, one-hour presentations
with special forums geared to the non-ham as well as the experienced ham radio
operator. The focus will be "hands on" with many demonstrations. Marty would be giving a lecture at 9AM on
“How to Snag that Rare DX.” Further
details can be found by going to their Web site: http://members.aol.com/n2ga/hru2002.html. Several members indicated that they would be
there to help at the “LIDXA Table.”
Lenny, KB2HK, described his recent cruise down to Antarctica. The ship left from Buenos Aires and visited the Shetland Islands. Lenny indicated that the ship would only permit about 100 passengers to embark on the ice shelf at one time, due to the extensive “maintenance” that was required to clean the excessive penguin excrement, that was all over the embarkation site, from the passengers’ boots, clothing, etc.
Since
John, N2JE, was not able to handle the refreshments any more, the club is
looking for a new refreshment chairperson.
The club did not have any refreshments at tonight’s meeting.
Marty
Smith, KA2NRR, resigned as club Corresponding Secretary, and would not be
sending out the monthly meeting notices.
Several members said the LIDXA should end this mailing of the monthly
meeting notices, and handle all information of this nature on the club’s Web
site. Marty said this format would be
in effect for future meetings. Ed said
he would make sure that the past meeting minutes would also be available, in
advance of the next meeting, for KE2LJ to post on the club’s Web site.
The
scheduled video on the 1994 DXpedition to Peter Island as 3YØPI was then
shown. This excellent video not only
portrayed the ham radio aspects of this trip, but also presented a remarkable
travelogue on this remote and frigid island.
This meeting concluded at 9:40PM after all the
scheduled business and entertainment had finished. The next regularly scheduled meeting for the LIDXA is on Friday,
February 15, 2002.
______________________________________
Ed Whitman, K2MFY
LIDXA Secretary