The CRES Amateur Radio Club held its first general membership meeting
of the year on Thursday, 03 February 2011, at the New Albany branch of
the Columbus Metropolitan Library.  The following members and guests
were in attendance:

K8RSP		Dave Woolf		- President
K8LJ		Bob Kenyon		- Vice President
KD8WK		Rob Stampfli		- Secretary
KD8ZG		Art Grandle		- VE Liaison
N9CX		Bill Erwin		- Past President
WA8LBZ		Al Mecozzi
KD8DZ		Mike Mickelson
W8NFT		Doug Gibbs
K8AX		Dave Brown
WA8PGE		Fred Sass
N4HAI		Tom Foy
N8WL		Steven Katz
KC8DJR		George Kinder
WB8ABE		Philip Wilcox
N8VWQ		Bob Mayzer
KC9AKG		Pat Rainbolt		- guest
KD8OQA		Martin Hohl		- guest
W8KRR		Pete Elliott		- guest

K8RSP called the meeting to order at 7:00 PM.

The first order of business was to discuss the desirability of the
club renting a flea market space at the Dayton Hamvention this year.
The Hamvention folks have a special rate for ham clubs -- four
spaces for $100.   In the past, the club has used their space (1)
to allow members to sell their goods, and (2) to provide a space
for members to rest and relax and also to store items they have
bought until they are ready to leave.  The consensus view was that
this would be useful.  K8LJ and KD8WK claimed it might be the
determining factor in their going to Dayton this year.  By contrast,
regular flea market spaces go for $70 per space.  KD8WK will call
the Hamvention to verify the availability of these spaces and get
back to the Executive Committee.  If we acquire the spaces, we'll
have to decide whether to split the expenses (and space) with the
Newark ARC group.

Dave also reported that the Executive Committee is attempting to
resolve the issue of the vacant Contest Coordinator position.
The committee consensus view is that the position entails too much
work, and they are looking at how to split or downsize it.  One
option is to make the CC responsible for filing the logs, but not
responsible for doing the groundwork for procuring a location for
our club contests.  Since W3CRZ has in the past performed many
of these functions, the Executive Committee wants to discuss the
particulars with him and get his thoughts after he returns from
vacation.

Dave reported that he had again been contacted by a local resident
who asked for help with the diagnosis of a continual noise she
hears on her property which she thinks may be electromagnetic in
nature.  K8RSP and KD8WK had met with her last fall, but were
unable to discern anything, and could not hear the noise themselves.
Dave said he might make another attempt with a spectrum analyzer.

The minutes of the December 7th meeting were approved.

N9CX gave the Treasurer's report for W3CRZ.  The club has $9,460.10
in its various accounts at Telhio.

KD8ZG reported the club's next VE exams will be held in early April
at the Parkview Presbyterian Church in Reynoldsburg.  The exact
date is still being determined.

K8RSP reported that we have been having technical difficulties with
the repeater.  The audio level on the repeater's output is fluctuating
between what is normal and loud enough to cause a noticeable distortion.
In addition, we are still hearing some local radio stations weakly on
the repeater output.  Dave is continuing to investigate.

KD8WK scanned the roster of those present and introduced two guests,
Pat Rainbolt/KC9AKG and Martin Hohl/KD8OQA, who has visited us before.

Rob reported that the Columbus Works ("CB") location had won the
"Top-5" location score in last year's CQ-WE contest, and showed a
certificate we had received for it.  Our club has held onto this honor
in the contest since 1999, although we received a real challenge from
Middletown ("MT") this year.  Indeed, MT actually beat us in the
total number of submitted logs, with an unprecedented 27 participants
this year.

Rob also mentioned that the CQ-WE committee is interested in trying
to preserve some Bell System heritage by creating a history area on
the CQ-WE website for the various Bell System locations.  He had
written a brief history of Columbus Works and the CRES-ARC and asked
people to review it and let him know of any errors.  In addition,
if anyone has an historical knowledge of other locations, it would be
appreciated if they would commit it to text for inclusion as well.

N9CX commented on a conversation he had with a new ham who had just
bought a "$200 J-Pole antenna".  Bill commented that any new ham in
the club should contact the club before investing that much in an
antenna.

N8WL renewed his request that members should wear name badges to
the club meetings for the benefit of the newer members and guests.

The question of our Field Day location came up.  Our normal locale,
the Infirmary Mound Park near Granville, is closed for the winter,
but is expected to open again once the weather warms up.  K8LJ said
he would call and verify that we can reserve our standard location
in the park for Field Day once again this year.

The meeting was adjourned at 7:23 PM after which K8LJ gave a brief
introduction to tonight's topic, the JT65-HF weak signal digital
mode, and then turned the floor over to WA8LBZ who gave a very
thorough presentation on the K1JT software program which implements
this mode.  After Al's presentation, K8AX and N8WL gave a
demonstration of the protocol using two low power station in the
meeting room each connected to dummy loads.

Respectfully submitted,
Rob Stampfli / KD8WK
CRES-ARC Secretary
WA8LBZ