CRARC Committee update – April edition #Committee_update

The CRARC committee meets on-line on the second Wednesday of the month, to discuss the running of CRARC. This email is an outline of items covered and other topics potentially of interest to CRARC members and is promulgated to keep members aware of what is going on.

Reminder – Wednesday 26 Apr 2023 (yes this Wednesday, the day after ANZAC Day), the CRARC April general meeting will be held at the club rooms, doors opening 7:30 for an 8pm kickoff with an antenna show and tell night.

Other upcoming issues of interest: For ANZAC Day, VK amateurs are permitted to use the AX prefix instead of VK (for example AX1ACA instead of VK1ACA) – this is not mandatory, but is available for those who wish to use it. Also the WIA will be holding their AGM on Saturday 13^th May 2023 at the University of Canberra – WIA members will have received an invite to attend.

The hamclubonline (HCOL) membership management tool continues to tick along – there have been some issues found so if in doubt, contact Graham VK1GVC. Currently we have 199 financial members of the club. As always if you have any membership issues please email Graham VK1GVC on membership@crarc.org.au 

CRARC maintains a number of Beacons and Repeaters.

The DMR repeater appeared to have suffered from a corrupted card again – work on ruggedising it is underway and we hope the repeater will be back online shortly. IRLP and Echolink are back and fully operational.

The next Foundation course is 20-21 May and is already booked out. The next course is currently scheduled for 15-16 Jul and will open for registering after completion of the current course. Note that the education team may also conduct upgrade assessments on the Saturday of the course (pending assessor availability and sufficient lead time to order exams) in addition to out of sessions examinations by arrangement with the education team.

There have been no additional WICEN activities since the last update went out, with low key support to the BMSC “Horizon Apartments Narooma Forest Rally on 19 May.

Resumption of tech nights has finally happened with a DMR programming focussed night being held last week. Thanks to Graeme and Don in particular, but also to all those who participated or otherwise assisted that I have failed to mention.

Over the next couple of months, we intend to hold a series of meetings that will be focussed on antennas and antenna construction activities. We currently have no other presentations for future meeting nights, so if you have anything suitable, please let us know. We need members to assist with these presentations – please do not just expect the committee to continue plucking topics out of thin air.

And a correction to the new committee construct – an error was made in the March committee update email (sorry Graeme and Bruce), corrected committee construct as per below:

President – Matt VK1MA

Vice President – Carl VK1KCM

Vice President – Graeme VK1IO

Secretary – Fergus VK1FM

Treasurer – Malcom VK1MAL

Committee member – Steve VK2NSS

Committee member – Bob VK1ERF

Committee member – Bruce VK1BB

Matt VK1MA

For the CRARC Committee