January 2010 Letter from the Prez

Here it is 2010 and 2009 is over! (Let’s hope 2010 is better than 2009 was for many people.) I hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year. This will be my last letter as SARA president. I’m sad to leave the office but I’m looking forward to spending more time on other aspects of the hobby. These last two years went by fast. I anticipate being an active member of SARA for many years. Once you’ve put so much of yourself into something like this, you can never quite let go of it. I want to thank everyone for the support you’ve give me over the last two years. There were some tough challenges during my term as president (repeater…anyone?) but the club has survived and grown. I know that I have learned a lot and those lessons will help me the rest of my life. If you have ever thought about an officer position with SARA, I strongly encourage you to pursue it. You will learn a lot that will help you in life also, and help the club. It is a very rewarding experience.

As usual, SARA has a lot going on. We have decided to have Field Day (FD) at the City of Oakdale’s Discovery Center. If you were at the December meeting, you heard Bruce Anderson and Paul Reinke talk about the Discovery Center and invite us to hold FD there. It is a new and very nice facility. We are still working out the details but the format will be very similar to the 2009 FD.

We have our second international member. If you remember, we had Bill Unger VE3XT from Canada join us at Split Rock. We now also we have Carlos “Keko” Diez TI5KD / K2CE joining us as an associate member. Carlos is originally from Stillwater, but is now in Costa Rica. Listen for him on the HF bands and nets.

Elections are here! Shel NØDRX will be sending out emails and ballots to vote by email, snail mail, or phone. You can also vote at the January meeting. This will be the new leadership of SARA so make sure you are heard and vote.

This months meeting program will be given by new member Justin Richert KDØIQV on setting up Echolink on your computer. The presentation will also include hands on training. If you live in an apartment or an antenna restricted development or the XYL will not let you put an antenna array up in the back yard; Echolink may just be what you need.

The SARA repeater… This was the biggest and most challenging project during my term as president. SARA now has a state-of-the-art repeater. While we are not as high as we were on the Excel stack, we do have about the same coverage area. Improvements to the repeater system are still in progress and we are working on adding emergency power as I write this. I want to thank all those who helped by donating equipment, labor, and time to make this a successful project. Like all repeaters, from time to time we have some QRM or QRN on the repeater and with the Minnesota Repeater Council’s new coordination procedures, this may increase. The TWG is working on reducing any interference we might experience. Interference, whether it be man-made (QRM) or natural (QRN), is always frustrating and, at times, downright irritating. On an open repeater such as ours, some QRM is unavoidable; your only recourse being to tolerate it. An example is distant stations working another repeater on the same frequency pair and heard via ducting. If however, the QRM is intentional (you can tell when it is), we ask that you do not acknowledge it. Experience has shown that if the troublemaking station is totally ignored, its operator will eventually get bored and go away. Acknowledging attempts to disrupt the normal activity on the repeater only ensures that the disruptions will continue. Trust me! Ignored and left alone, the QRMer will go away. So, ignore the QRM as best you can (turn off your radio, switch to another frequency, etc.) but never, ever, admit to being interfered with on the air.

Well, that’s about it from me. I want to wish everyone a happy and prosperous new year in 2010. Thank you for all the support you’ve given me. I hope that my efforts have made you proud to be a member of SARA. Thanks again and 73.

RicKØBRennan
SARA President (for about another week)

P.S. The XYL is thrilled to not have to proof read any more of these for typos and grammar errors!!! (She made me write that!)