President's Corner for March 2010

Hello Fellow Amateurs,
With all the snow we have had lately, I hope everybody’s antenna farm has held up under the stress. I checked my tower guys just to make sure they were secure and used binoculars to check things up on the tower.
If you were at the last meeting, you know we had an excellent discussion about antennas for our repeater site project. The discussion involved vertical, horizontal in different configurations. This was participated by all and I learned a lot by listening to other Hams giving their opinions. We have an abundance of knowledge among us, and we should share this with others to help each other with our own projects.
As I write this, we have a tentative date to go on the mountain and install our new “stuff” on the 13th of March. Snow has kept us off the site to get this project completed. I hope the weather will cooperate with us to get this completed very soon. I know the members will like to see it on the air also. Then we can have some training sessions on how to remotely operate the rig over the internet.
Our March meeting will be a road trip. We have been invited by Kevin DuPlantis, W4KEV, to be his guest at the studios of South Central Communications. The studios are located on Sharps Ridge.
As you start up to the top of the park, the first station on the right with the REALLY steep drive is where we are going. The address is 1100 Sharps Ridge Memorial Park Drive, 37917. Studios and transmitter are located at this site. We may be in for a treat, with the recent problems they had on the ridge. We will have to show up to see what that treat may be. Kevin also owns several repeaters in our area that have very good coverage for East Tennessee.
Just a reminder, our annual dues are payable now. Our treasurer is doing a fantastic job of keeping up with all the new members and regular payments that we have. Thanks Ron.
At our last meeting, we elected a new secretary. The new office holder is Angela Hickman, KG4GUN. Our former secretary, Katie Helms, resigned due to personal obligations. Welcome aboard Angela.
Lou Dreinhoefer, WB3JKQ, is working hard on our Hamfest. He has dealers lined up and is looking for volunteers to work the event to make it work smoothly. See Lou to sign up to help.
David Waters, AC4JF, the club trustee, is working very hard to get our new project on the air and keeping our existing repeaters operating. This is a time consuming job that we really appreciate him doing for us. Thanks David.
That’s all for this month. I hope the next time I write an article, we will be talking about the new remotely operated site.
Keep our Military troops in your prayers,
See you at the meeting,
Jim Norman, N4CFB
President