Committee September update
The CRARC committee meets on-line on the second Wednesday of the month, to discuss the running of CRARC.
Since the Covid outbreak, face to face meetings and Tech nights have for the most part been avoided due to the large proportion of club members who are in the vulnerable category. With an apparent easing of covid transmissions, we are considering the return to some variant of face to face meetings – obviously this is heavily reliant on member opinions, so if you feel strongly one way or the other or have suggestions on how best to handle this, please let the committee know.
We have still had no offers or even suggestions of presentations for general meetings – which makes face to face meetings fairly pointless without them, so please have a think about what you can provide – or even what you would like and we can try to find a suitable presenter. We do have one topic in mind that we feel would be well suited to one of the younger generation – that being 3D printing and its application to the AR hobby. It doesn’t have to be one person – more than happy for a small group to provide the presentation.
The membership secretary is busy catching up on admin having been out of the country for several months and advises that the current financial membership number is sitting at approximately 103. Graham has not sent out his usual start of FY membership email reminders having been away and also due to significant moves being made with the new membership management system. We have started to migrate membership data to HamClubOnline as we progress past the testing phase and if members get a renewal reminder from HCOL then please pay with the link provided. Otherwise hold off renewal payments until notified. Any queries to membership@crarc.org.au
CRARC maintains a number of Beacons and Repeaters.
Except for the Isaacs Ridge VHF repeater, the analogue repeaters (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 appears to be working well with no reported issues, however if people do notice anything unusual, please let the committee know.
WICEN spring time awakening is approaching although is somewhat muted in comparison to previous years. Unfortunately, the Brookvale horse endurance has had to move to the same day as the Fitz’s Challenge bike event which makes it unsupportable for us. I anticipate that a call for assistance will be made to the WICEN mailing list in approximately 1-2 weeks.
The September Foundation Licence Courses and Examinations was run last weekend with 4 participants and 1 standard upgrade examination also conducted. All course attendees are offered a year’s free membership of CRARC. Registrations for the November course are already open and filling – 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) and out of sessions examinations by arrangement with the education team.
Matt
VK1MA
For the CRARC Committee