West Australian Repeater Group (Inc.)
Minutes of the General Meeting 6/3/2000
Held at the RSL Hall, Fred Bell Pde Victoria Park.

Meeting Commenced at 1952 Hours

1 - Present
VK6MT  Mal  President
VK6HAO Peter  Vice President
VK6LZ  Cliff  Secretary
VK6ZLZ Christine Treasurer/Membership Officer
VK6CSW Clive  Net Control
SWL  Gavin
Apologies:
VK6UU  Will  Committee

The meeting was chaired by VK6MT Mal

2 - Minutes:
The minutes of the February 2000 General Meeting were read and accepted  (VK6HAO/VK6CSW).

3 - Matters Arising
3.1 Item 3.1 International Beacon
VK6UU Will, traced the antenna fault to a corroded trap connection and has repaired it, the beacon is back in operation.

3.2 Item 3.3 Victoria Park
The controller board is still being sorted out by Mal VK6MT, parts are on order, licence still not required yet.

3.3 Item 7.1 Tic Hill
Further to last month's report on the successful guest LIPD test (on 152.025 MHz) at Tic Hill site, and the request from the Four Wheel Drive club for permanent access to the site as a reception relay to their base in Canningvale, the committee confirmed agreement to the request and appointed the site manager VK6TRC Rob as liaison.

3.4a Item 7.2 Batteries (particularly Tic Hill)
Further to agreement last month "that diode separation would be used when parallelling these batteries as it appears that one battery failure at Fremantle had adversely affected the others", on further discussion it was realised that on solar sites the diode separation would render the solar controller in-operative due to voltage drop through the diodes and that the fully charged state would not be recognized.

3.4b Low voltage tone at Tic Hill
It was also reported (by VK6GU) that the low battery tone had been heard on Tic Hill which would necessitate a site visit - later information from VK6TRC who had visited site to install the three "new" batteries revealed that the one of the solar panels had become disconnected requiring another visit.
Action VK6TRC

3.5 Item 7.3 Busselton Digipeater
VK6HAO reported that he had informed WAADCA of the problem and that WARG had no current plans to visit the site.
Action VK6HAO to pass VK6QB's phone number to Rob Lamb.

3.6 Item 7.4 Possible move of 10/2 metre gateway.
A Possible site could be the  Orange Grove Quarry, but still awaiting a feasibility study/site test.

3.7 Avon Valley
Nothing known.
Action VK6ZLZ to contact VK6CA for information

4 - Correspondence -
Via Packet from VK6ZRT informing group of intention to install a 70cm repeater at the channel 1 site in Bunbury using 439.275/434.275 MHz and asking if these frequencies would cause any problems. Also informing group of imminent reactivation of the 2 mtr repeater.
Action VK6UU to confirm if suggested frequencies are OK.
Action VK6CSW to reply to VK6ZRT.

5 - Treasurer's Report
Bank Statement at 25/02/00 shows a balance of $1,620-93

VK6MT presented a bill for Rolleystone Key $4-95
Approved VK6CSW/VK6HAO - carried

It was suggested that as licenses were renewed last year for 5 years, a suspense account should be created and toped up yearly in order to cover licenses when they next become due for renewal.
Action VK6ZLZ

6 - Membership
No change

7 - WARG Net
VK6CSW reported that VK6MM had mentioned that the Slow Scan TV users on Mt. William were having problems with the ident interfering with the transmission of pictures and had requested the DTMF code for disabling the ident.

After some discussion it was agreed that the slowscan operators be advised that the group would prefer them to use the 67Hz CTCSS sub tone as used by the WIA broadcast as this would disable the ident and also the time out only whilst the SCTV station was in Transmit mode.

Use of the restricted engineering DTMF codes by users was not considered appropriate for security reasons, and resetting the repeater state to normal after use could also be forgotten.

The above subject to agreement by VK6UU - who later agreed.
Action - VK6MM to be advised for passing on to SSTV group.

7 - General Business
7.1 Future Planning
There followed a discussion on the future direction of the group.

It was noted that the group is responsible for four 2-metre and two 70cm metropolitan repeaters (one linked to 29 MHz and not including the proposed Victoria Park site), one 6-metre repeater, and six 2-metre country repeaters.

Concern was expressed at the lack of new blood joining the band of active volunteers particularly volunteers capable of climbing masts, although most tasks were of quite a simple nature such as checking the electrolyte level in batteries.

In addition, in common with Amateur Radio in general, membership of the group was falling, this was seen as possibly creating a financial problem for maintenance and replacement of repeaters in the future.

It was noted that the Repeater licences are paid up for another four years.

Although most users were members, perhaps more could be done to encourage non member users to join the group.

It was also noted that the usage of the metro repeaters had fallen considerably over the past few years which perhaps pointed to an over supply, this lead to the rationale of possibly decommisioning one or more of the metro repeaters however each of the current repeaters fulfilled a separate purpose.

The question was asked "What happens to the group's repeaters if and when volunteers dry up ? They cannot be simply abandoned."

The future of country repeaters was discussed.

7.2 Newsletter

VK6ZLZ reminded the meeting that the Annual Newsletter is due and should be completed by next month's meeting.

Contributions from the following were promised;

VK6UU 4 pages
VK6MT President's report
VK6ZLZ Membership and Treasurer's reports (front and back)
VK6CSW Net controller's report

7.3 WIA Conference of Clubs

It was noted that the WIA AGM and Conference of Clubs will take place on Saturday the 15th of April at 10.30 am.

The President Mal VK6MT will prepare a draft presentation for the conference to be discussed at the next meeting.

The group will be represented by the following:
VK6MT, VK6CSW, VK6HAO.

8 Meeting closed at 21.30 hours

9 Next Meeting April 3rd.

VK6LZ Secretary

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