Committee update #Committee_update
Good afternoon, the following information is provided to update members on what their CRARC Committee is doing. As is probably evident, we have not met the intended monthly distribution but we will strive to pick up the slack on this.
Matt
VK1MA
CRARC President
The CRARC committee meets monthly on-line, to discuss the running of CRARC. Normally these meetings are held on the second Wednesday of the month. There was no meeting held in July due to a number of the committee being interstate or overseas.
With the membership secretary being out of the country and unable to access his records, we cannot report on the current numbers, but historically it significantly reduces after July 1st as we move into the new membership year.
CRARC maintains a number of Beacons and Repeaters.
Except for the Isaacs Ridge VHF repeater the analogue repeaters at Mt. Ginini, Bulls Head and Isaacs Ridge UHF repeater are all operational. The D-Star and IRLP/ Echolinlk Repeater at Isaacs Ridge remain online and operational, although here remains some packet loss issues with d-star due to link interference issues. The 2 metre beacon remains off the air.
The DMR repeater at Isaacs Ridge was replaced with a new to us repeater. This consists of a Tait TB8100 and a MMDVM. Glen VK1XX and Carl VK1KCM were instrumental in getting the repeater tuned and the MMDVM settings adjusted correctly with the repeater now working very well. The MMDVM has been tweaked to maximise range without preventing those close in from accessing it – if there are issues with it please let the committee know.
WICEN in winter is traditionally low key with just a small number of events out of the area. The spring time awakening is approaching us with the Brookvale horse endurance and Fitz’s Challenge bike events both occurring in October. Details are usually posted to the CRARC calendar and calls for assistance made to the WICEN mailing list 3-4 weeks prior to the event.
The Foundation Licence Courses and Examinations scheduled for July was unfortunately cancelled due to a number of covid scares and re-scheduling issues, with participants transferring to the next course in September. All course attendees qualify for a year’s free membership of CRARC.
Since the Covid outbreak, face to face meetings and Tech nights have not been conducted due to the large proportion of club members who are in the vulnerable category. However with an apparent easing of covid transmissions, we are looking at options to return to some variant of face to face meetings.
As people have no doubt observed, there have been quite a few gaps in general meetings this year – we have had great difficulty in finding presenters for them and have pretty much tapped out our own sources. So, please consider a presentation on a topic you feel would be of interest to the members and if you have one, let the committee know please!!!!!!!!!