The CRES Amateur Radio Club held a dinner meeting at Kristino's Pizza, 220 Granville St, Gahanna, on 12 March 2003. The meeting was called to order by President David Jeffords/K8ON at 7:00 PM. Those in attendance were: KD8WK, K9RV, W8ERW, KD8BJ, WD8EBS, KC8TM, WA8LBZ, KC8HIH, KC8VKS, K8ON, K8TX, N9CX, N4DB, N8ZOG, K8AX, K8NU, K8KJ, NV7X, WA8HPW, KB8DEO, W8FMN, and W8REW. Rob Stampfli/KD8WK gave the Secretary and Treasurer's Report: The last general meeting was held on 12 Dec 2002 and the minutes were disseminated via the email exploder shortly thereafter. No corrections were received in response to the mailing, so the minutes stand as previously sent. The minutes of all general and excomm meetings are maintained on the Club's alternate web site: for the reference of the members. The Club currently has $3,757.58 cash in its Telhio account, plus $2,023.46 in Certificates of Deposit. Additionally, there is $188.55 in the Petty Cash fund. In response to a question from the floor, it was reported that $3,254 was raised directly by the sale of equipment at the October auction, $806.82 from the sale of non-bid items on Ebay, and $862.00 from the sale of equipment at the Mansfield hamfest. Most of the equipment has been liquidated. The most expensive thing the Club now owns, besides the repeater, is its extensive collection of vacuum tubes. Rob also announced that the Executive Committee had previously voted to pay for a space at the Mansfield hamfest and the upcoming Dayton Hamvention to allow the Club to liquidate its remaining equipment and provide a place where club members may congregate. Tricia Kovacs/KC8HIH asked if the location of our space at the Hamvention was known, and Rob reported we have not received a space assignment yet. Dave Woolf/K8RSP will provide a van for transporting items to be sold to the Hamvention, and transporting purchased items back to Columbus. Club members desiring to sell personal items at the Club booth may do so by (1) agreeing to assist with the staffing of the booth, and (2) agreeing to donate 10 percent of the proceeds of any sales to the Club, up to a maximum of $5.00. (These provisions were established at the 29 Jan 2003 Executive Committee meeting.) Jerry Scott/K9RV reported on CQ-WE results. The Club did well, having both the most participants of any location and the highest location score. (It was pointed out that this usually carried with it the responsibility of hosting the next year's event.) Jerry also had a surprise: He had already received the certificates for last year's event, and he passed out the certificates (in order of decreasing score no less) to those present at the meeting. Dave Woolf/K8RSP reported that the next Club-sponsored VE session will be this April 5th at the Parkview Presbyterian Church on Livingston Avenue. VEs desiring to do so may meet at the Bob Evans on Brice Road at 7:30 for breakfast. The session will commence at 9:00 AM. Jerry pointed out the testing fees have been raised to $12. Our next general meeting will likely center around Field Day preparations. Stu Steenburgh/KB8DEO and Mike Rauh/NV7X will take care of approaching Lucent to see if we can again use the ball diamond area behind the plant. In the event that we are not granted permission to use the Lucent facility, members brainstormed other potential locations: Mentioned were Jess Howard Park, Columbus Metro Park (closes at dark, so we'd have to get special permission to operate overnight), Friendship Park, Mike Rauh's (where it was posited we might be able to use his 130 ft tower if we completed putting it up the day of the event), and generally someone's large yard, where 40 ft ladders could erected to hold up the antennas (it was claimed this has been done before). The repeater is currently operating fine. There is no official Sunday evening net anymore, although there is usually a roundtable among members that congregate on the machine at 9:00 PM on Sundays. The time-out timer has been increased to 4 minutes due to a propensity of several members to time out the 3-minute timer during these chats. Al Mecozzi/WA8LBZ announced that there was a major computer- oriented event at the Dayton Hara Arena this weekend, which rivaled the Hamvention in size. Al also requested the assistance of anyone with a knowledge of how to put jpg and mpg files on a CD-ROM in a format suitable for displaying with a DVD player. Those present gave Carl Yaffey/K8NU a round of applause for finally being able to attend a meeting. Carl rebutted that he'll attend more often if the meetings are held on a Wednesday other than the 3rd one of the month. Jack Kirkpatrick asked for suggestions for speakers or other programs for future club meetings. Responses included inviting Bill Parker/W8DMR to speak again, and having field trips to view the WOSU facilities, the Television Museum in Hilliard, or the Weather facilities at the Columbus airport. Dave Woolf inquired about the status of the spare parts the Club had for servicing the radios for the Radio Reading Service for the Blind. Dave said he had been approached by someone who indicated the service was having trouble getting their radios repaired. Mike Stansbery/WD8EBS said all CORRS spare parts had been turned over to Hal Smith. Al Mecozzi suggested the Club might consider a project to assist GIs overseas. A show of hands indicated that the 2nd Wednesday in June (the 11th) was widely acceptable for a possible next meeting date. The meeting was adjourned at 7:40 PM. Respectfully submitted, Rob Stampfli CRES-ARC Secretary/Treasurer