CTRI CG and PVRC

Happy December, everyone:

Before I moved to RI from MD in 1981, I was a dues paying member of PVRC. There is a philosophy in PVRC which says, “Once a member of PVRC, always a member of PVRC” so I receive newsletter mailings.  Reading this month’s PVRC newsletter, it occurred to me that our l’il contest club has something in common with PVRC… we are both “no dues” clubs. I don’t recall when PVRC changed to “no dues,” but it was after I moved up here. What caught my attention in the lead article was a paragraph about the cost of their intra-club awards (plaques and endorsement plates) was the second highest item in their budget at about $1200 per year. I was the beneficiary of one of the intra-club awards in 1980 when I earned the 5 Million Point plaque. I don’t know what the biggest budget item is. The writer of the article then made this statement: “Please do remember that the Club operates on a no-dues basis, but needs your support in order to continuing to offer these programs.” Does that sound familiar? If you have been paying attention to what is happening in the club, it should. Soooo… my question to you all now is, “Have you sent a contribution in to the Treasurer to help support the club?” Of course, you don’t need to answer me. Just send a check to Chuck. In case you have forgotten, the Treasurer is Chuck Newman, KA1CQR. His address in QRZ.com is good… but I don’t know who the guy in the picture in QRZ.com is… perhaps someone auditioning for being a Santa Clause.

73, Ken K3IU

2013-2014 CTRI Champions Leaderboard

Good morning, all:

I believe that this is the first posting of the Leaderboard for this contest season. It is current with reported results through the CQWW DX CW contest. It is a spreadsheet compatible with MS Excel 97-2007 and hopefully you will have no problems opening it. Clicking on the link below should work to open the spreadsheet.

CTRI-Champions-Leaderboard_20131202_PROTECTED

73, Ken K3IU
Keeper of the Leaderboard

December, 2013 Contest Manager’s Notes

Happy Thanksgiving to all CTRI members and their families!

Let me start this month’s notes by apologizing for my relative inactivity over the last month or so. I’ve been pretty busy with work, school, and family, and just recently was hired as the Graduate Research Assistant in PC’s History department, so I have not had much free time with which to enjoy amateur radio in general. Unfortunately I missed operating in the CQ WW CW Contest, which I had been counting on to improve my country count of 80M and 160M. There’s always next year, I suppose.

On to December’s contest happenings. December is a great month for contesting, although I don’t know that most contesters would view it as such. There are some interesting opportunities with plenty of activity to satisfy almost anyone I would imagine.

If you like 160M December and January are your months. The ARRL 160-Meter Contest runs between 2200z December 6th through 1600z December 8th.

2013 CQWW DX CW Contest Results

Please post your results here. Don’t forget that the deadline for submitting your log is 2359 UTC November 29, 2013 for the CW contest. That’s 6:59PM (EST) Friday evening the 29th.

When I get all the results from this contest, I’ll put an updated Leaderboard on our web site.

73,

Ken K3IU
Keeper of the Leaderboard.

CQWW CW @ W1AN/W1DX this weekend (23/24 Nov 2013) – Operator Scheduling

CTRI’ers,

I want to contribute to the effort this weekend @ John’s, but I have some commitments that are going to force me to operate only at certain times.  I’d like to coordinate those times if at all possible so that we spread the operators out over the entire weekend, instead of us having a lump of ops all at the same time (sitting around rag-chewing instead of operating).

Please post what times you can be there, and what times you absolutely can’t be there, and perhaps we can “force fit” ops to the entire weekend without too many problems.  I will work with John on Thursday and Friday during the day to assist with final preparations, like making sure the F-key labels are ready, the computer files are up-to-date, etc.

I CANNOT operate early Friday evening, nor Sunday morning through mid afternoon.  I guess that means I could be available most of Saturday.  I would like to get some sleep Saturday night since I have a busy Sunday morning/afternoon.

Thanks for posting your options.  I am looking forward to sitting behind the stack on 15-meters (5 over 5).  We should have good propagation – it should be a blast.

73, Mike, K1DM

2013 ARRL November Sweepstakes – Phone

This weekend is the Phone Sweepstakes weekend. Hopefully conditions will be as good as they were for the CW weekend and that everyone will get a clean sweep! Don’t forget that there are now 83 sections now that Ontario has been split up.

Please post your scores and comments here by adding a comment to this posting. Thanks…

73,

Ken K3IU, Keeper of the Leaderboard

Meeting Notice — November 9, 2013 — Please RSVP ASAP

It’s that time again. If you are familiar with the interactive meeting notice skip down to “Topics“. This is an interactive meeting notice. What, you may ask, is an interactive meeting notice? As the phrase suggests, it is a meeting notice which requires interaction by the readers. For example: we need to have topics for presentation at the meeting; we need presenters; we need volunteers to provide lunch; we need to know who is coming to the meeting so the quantity of lunch portions may be determined, and so on. This post will be updated as interactions (comments) are appended.

Topics

  1. Contest Report
  2. Report on Resolution of Dues issue
  3. K1DM technical presentation on Vector Network Analyzers and affordable instrumentation
  4. NP3U 2014 possibilities
  5. Prioritize the plaques we intend to sponsor
  6. Matters Arising

Lunch provider: K1SD

Coffee and Drinks by: K1SD

Members who will attend: W1PN, K1SD, K3IU, K1DM, NG1G, W1XX, KS1J, W1AN, KI1G, W1WBB

Venue: QTH of K1SD at the usual time of 10:00

2013 ARRL November Sweepstakes – CW

This weekend is the CW Sweepstakes weekend. Hopefully conditions will be as good as last weekend and everyone will get a clean sweep! Don’t forget that there are now 83 sections now that Ontario has been split up.

Please post your scores here by adding a comment to this posting.

73,

Ken K3IU, Keeper of the CTRI Leaderboard

W1BYH (SK)

Sad to report that Norman L. Rivers, W1BYH, of Leominster, MA and CTRI member became a silent key yesterday, October 27.

Norm was a high school classmate of mine and was largely responsible for my becoming a radio amateur.  He ran a two-way radio business for his entire professional life. 

Norm was a frequent contributor to CTRI contest scores:  Sweepstakes, RTTY, DX, NEQP.  He was especially an RTTY enthusiast from the days of the Model 15. I operated Class B Field Day with Norm the past three years from his lakeside cabin in Ashburnham, MA.  He was diagnosed with cancer a couple of years ago.

I was advised today by telephone by his son Michael.  Carolyn and I will be attending the calling hours on Wednesday in  Fitchburg, MA.

The key of W1BYH is now silent.

— John, W1XX

 

Meeting Minutes, October 18, 2013

Meeting called to order at 1038h by K1DM

A quorum was recognized

K1DM ruled that in view of the principal topic for discussion the meeting would be governed by Roberts Rules and that business would be conducted with controlled debate.

Treasurer was absent but sent a report that the treasury was $487.56.

Contest report moved to the end of meeting.

MOTION: K1SD/NG1G moved (this convention of showing who moved and who seconded will be followed in these minutes for brevity) “CTRI CG will eliminate the sponsorship of all plaques”.

Discussion: Jim then argued against his own motion saying he would like to see sponsorship of plaques expanded if it were not for the shortage of funds.

K3IU: would rather give Members the opportunity to donate sufficient funds by Jan 1 to cover one year’s expenses, if this fails then revisit the issue.

W1XX: surprised by posting by NG1G on website listing the number of plaques we sponsor — we should review which we really need to sponsor.

W1PN: discussion is wandering away from the motion, we should vote before spending more time on a motion that may fail.

Action: K3IU/W1XX call the question.

 Motion failed.

Effect: we do not want to stop sponsoring plaques. This raised the issue of how we can reconcile that with no source of funds.

Motion: W1PN/W1AN we should not agree to sponsor any plaque until we have money in hand to pay for it.

Discussion: NG1G argued that we need long term consistency of sponsorship because it works a hardship on contest sponsors to not know what we are going to do from year to year.

The nature of this motion made it obvious to the assembly that to rationally discuss the motion we had to grapple with the issue of how to have “money in hand to pay for it”.

W1PN: In the past we had essentially two sources of revenue: One revolved around Boxboro; the funds from there were returns on a raffle, and contributions from members for the sales of their equipment at the flea market table, the idea being you gave ten percent or more of the selling price, sometimes this happened and sometimes not. The other source, for example if we closed out a ham’s estate it was generally expected that ten percent of the proceeds would go to the club although in the case of the largest estate we received nothing from the heirs. There are no other sources of funds. Both external and internal forces have eliminated Boxboro as a source of funds, and there isn’t anything we can do about the external forces and so far we have failed to do anything about the internal forces. So the only source of funds we have is the commission on the sale of members’ equipment, or of the direct donation of funds by members, or of dues. There are no others, and it is a waste of time to talk about them as if they existed.

KB1RFJ: Is there a group that is violently opposed to dues?

There followed a long, rambling, and sometime impassioned, discussion of the nature of the club and the role that no dues plays in that essence.

  • Gentlemen’s club where we get together and help each other out.
  • Don’t want dues to govern the club.
  • We have always had dues; the dues were paid by the people who were willing to do the work.
  • Theme of camaraderie.
  • Don’t want to risk endangering camaraderie and sense of cooperation.

At last it became obvious to all of us that none wanted dues, and that all recognized we either had to eliminate all expenses (mostly plaques and website rental) or find another, assured, source of funds.

The chair called for a vote on what he characterized as “the no deficit spending motion”.

 Motion passed 5/3

Whereupon Pat made the following motion.

Motion: NG1G/KB1RFJ CTRI CG will remain a no dues club.

Discussion: W1XX objected that is was not necessary since the Constitution provides we are a no dues club.

W1PN: it’s a vacuous motion, therefore there is no penalty for voting either way.

None, except the observations that the motion by Pat was vacuous but not a tautological question.

Motion passed without dissent

Motion: W1PN/KB1RFJ In view of the ongoing financial needs of the club that members be encouraged to make a planned contribution in lieu of dues of $30 to $50 per year.

Discussion: There were comments and questions characterized by:

  • What does ‘planned’ mean.
  • I am not in favor of specifying an amount. …

which prompted the following:

Motion to amend: W1XX/K3IU moved to amend the motion to omit the dollar amount.

Discussion: The crux of the discussion revolved around recognition that the circumstance of some members in these hard times made it difficult for them to contribute that amount. The rejoinder was that this is a suggested amount not a requirement and that it is informative to the members in that it highlights the approximate cost of operating the club divided by the number of most active members.

Motion to amend passed 5/2/1

Motion to amend: W1XX/KB1RFJ so that the motion shall reflect a date certain of January 1.

Discussion: extensive discussion before wording of the amendment had been established. Issues raised included:

  • If no date certain is specified then nothing will happen.
  • January 1 is not the right date, it should be in September.
  • The date should be decided by the Executive Committee to allow for changing conditions.
  • The Executive Committee never meets.
  • There is a reason for choosing January 1. The new officers should have an opportunity to affect this and the issue of spending levels.

Motion to amend passed 7/1

 Motion as amended: In view of the ongoing financial needs of the club that members be encouraged to make planned contributions by January 1 in lieu of dues.

 Motion carried: unanimous.

W1PN made the suggestion that we take a few minutes to discuss the mechanics of implementing the motion that just passed.

W1PN: The motion on its face is not sufficiently explanatory for absent members to grasp what we are doing. A Q & A or exposition of some sort needs to be written that explains the elements of the issue and why we chose this way of approaching it, and how it will be implemented.

K1DM: I absolutely agree with that.

Motion: NG1G/W1XX That the Secretary, as a result of his eloquence, be assigned the task of a) informing the membership of the afore mentioned motion, and b) describing the mechanics of implementation and process of how that will take place, on WA1RR.ORG, and at the next club meeting which will be in November.

Discussion: K1SD objected that the first part was routine business and the Secretary’s responsibility to report.

K3IU: That’s pretty specific direction.

K1SD: The second part is your interpretation (addressing the Secretary, emphasis of speaker) of what the action is and the ramifications and the implementation policy, that is, your interpretation of what we intend to do to raise money. The first part is your job, Secretary Report, that doesn’t need to be a motion. The second part is …

NG1G: Well it is a motion, so we have to vote on it.

K1SD: The second part is, again, your interpretation (emphasis of speaker) of our intent and does that need to come back to an Executive Committee meeting, or is that just your interpretation of what we decided and how we’re gonna do it, and that’s it?

After some additional comments to clarify the meaning of the motion a vote was called.

Motion passed: unanimous

Contest Manager’s Report

See posting for October for details.

 

Respectfully submitted

Ed Haskell, W1PN, Secretary