West Australian Repeater Group (Inc.)
Minutes of the General Meeting 7/2/2000
Held at the RSL Hall, Fred Bell Pde Victoria Park.

Meeting Commenced at 1940 Hours

1 – Present
VK6LZ  Cliff  Secretary
VK6ZLZ Christine Treasurer/Membership Officer
VK6CSW Clive  Acting Chairman
VK6TRC Rob  Committee
SWL  Gavin
Visitor
VK6KHD Nigel

Apologies:
VK6MT  Mal  President
VK6HAO Peter  Vice President
VK6UU  Will  Committee

The meeting was chaired by VK6CSW Clive.

2 - Minutes:
The minutes of the January 2000 General Meeting were read and accepted  (VK6LZ/VK6ZLZ) subject to correction of section 5 Treasurer's Report item 2 Mt William Repairs should read Mt William Site rental.

3 - Matters Arising
3.1 Item 3.2 International Beacon
VK6NE Neil has aquired a type R7 antenna which appears to have a design fault in that several antennai of this model appear to have a high SWR on 18 Mhz. VK6MT Mal and VK6UU Will are to see if old antenna is repairable, or if something can be done about the high SWR on the new one.

3.2 Item 4 Correspondence
The replacement battery for the bulletin board has been installed.

3.3 Item 7.4 Victoria Park
Rob VK6TRC reported that further work has been carried out as time allows, the controller board is still being sorted out by Mal VK6MT, licence still not required yet.

4 - Correspondence - Nil

5 - Treasurer's Report  Nil
Income/expenses - VK6CSW enquired if any major expenditure is expected in the short term, and when are subscriptions due ?.

As licenses were renewed last year for 5 years there is no major outgoing expected, and the subs are due in May.

6 - Membership
Nigel VK6KHD was warmly welcomed as a new member.

7 - General Business
7.1 The guest LIPD test at Tic Hill site has been successful, so much so that the Four Wheel Drive club who want to use it as a reception relay to their base in Canningvale have asked if the group would allow them to set it up on site as a stand alone relay. As the meeting was a little short on Committee members it was proposed to carry this request forward to the next meeting, however it was proposed VK6TRC/VK6CSW that the meeting agreed in principle - carried.

7.2 New (2nd hand batteries)
Cliff VK6LZ reported that he had picked up a dozen 12 volt 200 AH? batteries kindly donated by Duncan VK6ZDP. Two had been installed by Don VK6UT  at VK6RFM to replace the failed "blue" batteries the others are earmarked to replace other "blue" batteries at Cataby, Avon, and Saddleback, 3 are to be sited at Tic Hill as the old battery bank is getting very long in the tooth.
It was agreed that diode separation would be used when parallelling these batteries as it appears that one battery failure at Fremantle had adversely affected the others.

7.3 Busselton Digipeater
It was reported that this digi comes and goes over a period of time, although the voice repeater is OK. This points to a fault in the digi or perhaps it's antenna, however it is believed that this equipment is still the responsibility of WAADCA.

7.4 10/2 metre gateway
Clive VK6CSW reported that Kim VK6TQ is interested in installing this at a new site, as Will VK6UU has indicated in the past that he would like to have it moved from his QTH. A Possible site could be the  Orange Grove Quarry.

This is also a candidate for the 2 metre morse beacon which will have to move shortly. Rob VK6TRC commented that he is shortly to carry out tests at the site for suitability.

7.5 Kattanning
Nigel VK6KHD asked if the problems he encountered with copying the Sunday net a few weeks ago (Distortion) had been addressed. It was thought that Garry the site manager was going to check it out, however since the new antenna had been installed at Mt Saddleback things had improved considerably.

There followed a discussion on the pros and cons of linking country repeaters to the City and the possibility of complete isolation by DTMF on demand, with fall back to linked status after a time interval.

8 Meeting closed at 20.45 hours

9 Next Meeting March 8th.

VK6LZ Secretary

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