The Executive Committee of the CRES Amateur Radio Club met on Wednesday, 26 January 2005. The meeting was held at Kristinos Pizza, 220 Granville St, Gahanna, and was attended by President Tricia Kovacs/KC8HIH, Vice President David Jeffords/K8ON, Secretary/Treasurer Rob Stampfli/KD8WK, VE Liaison Art Grandle/ KD8ZG, Station Trustee Mike Rauh/NV7X, and members Dave Woolf/ K8RSP and Marty Hartwell/KD8BJ. The meeting was called to order by KC8HIH at 7:10 PM. Art reported he had been in contact with the appropriate person at Mt. Carmel regarding the repeater and that they were quite receptive to our continued operations. One downside is that we would only have access to the repeater from 8AM - 5PM on weekdays, but this was viewed as acceptable. Mt. Carmel expects to start moving their people into the building around February 15th, but has yet to get the keys to the building. Marty asked about the HF antennas and whether they could be pressed into service for emergencies, perhaps by having COARES set up an emergency station in the old hamshack. Dave Woolf explained the repeater problems that have plagued us recently. Last week, the repeater experienced low audio on the remote link. The voter board was removed and Dave found a bad socket pin, which he strapped. Additionally a transistor, which was damaged in transit, was replaced. When the board was reinstalled, there were obvious level differences between the main receiver and the remote. Attempts to adjust the levels were not successful, and the repeater is on the air, but currently will not vote to the remote site unless there is no signal on the main site receiver. In addition, problems with variable link signal strengths that were observed last winter appear to have resurfaced, and the audio is generally perceived as being too hot. We will attempt to gain access to the repeater again soon to try to readjust these things. Unfortunately, only Stu Steenburgh/KB8DEO, our Equipment Manager, can get physical access, so we'll have to work around his schedule. Tricia reported she had received the list of 35 2004 CQ-WE participants who had requested a certificate from Carl Yaffey/ K8NU, our Contest Coordinator. Carl has compiled the results, which have been posted to the CQWE website, , and sent each participant an email thanking them for their participation. Tricia has devised the certificate, and she circulated a copy which was well received. The certificate will consist of a picture of the Columbus skyline, along with the pertinent information about the contest and the participant's name and call. It was agreed that we'll mail a certificate directly to each person who has paid for it, instead of trying to utilize the location managers for the distribution task. Rob has received $27 (and a stamp) from Carl for the green stamps sent him. We hope that the cost of producing and mailing the certificates will roughly equal the funds we have received. David Jeffords proposed the following club events for the coming quarter: (1) February 13th: The Mansfield Mid-Winter hamfest. We'll use 145.700 Mhz simplex as our club frequency. There will be a table reserved for selling items on a shared- cost basis. Contact Dave Woolf if you are interested in doing so. (2) David is working on getting a speaker for our 1st quarter general meeting which will tentatively be scheduled for March 9th, but this may change based on the speaker's availability. Stay tuned. Potential future meetings: (1) a tour of a commercial TV or radio station, (2) a tour of Battelle, and (3) hosting a post-Field-Day get-together for all local Field Day participants. Rob presented a summary of last year's budget, and a proposed budget for the upcoming year. We broke about even -- spending $21 more than we took in. The budgets are located at: and . Rob reported we have $4501.35 in our checking and savings account plus approximately $2100 in CDs, and $80.85 in our cash account. The meeting was adjourned at 8:30 PM. Respectively submitted, Rob Stampfli CRES-ARC Secretary/Treasurer