President’s Message for 2010

Hello Fellow Amateurs,

The New Year is upon us and I hope that this writing finds you off to a good
start. The purpose of this letter is to review recent projects and inform every
one of the future projects in which we are involved.
This past year has seen many upgrades to our repeater system. The 6m split
site was consolidated to one site. One of the main reasons for this was the
logistics of maintaining two sites. With our limited resources, the split site
just wasn’t working. We installed a new Sinclair folded dipole antenna,
linked the 6m band into our existing linked system and now we have (4)
bands covered by our repeaters. The four repeaters can be linked or run as
independent repeaters as best needed.
Now, let's review our latest project. We have acquired high speed internet
service to our site, which will open a whole new world for us. We have
installed a Davis weather station at our site. The data collection portion is
located at approximately 60ft. up on our tower. It collects, temperature,
outside humidity, solar radiation, and a rain gage. The anemometer and wind
direction is located at approximately 85ft on our tower. The link to the
weather station is www.weatherlink.com/user/rack. There is also a link on
our website. This is a very helpful and entertaining tool for our members and
also our site host, the Forestry Service of Tennessee.
We have plans of installing a pan, tilt, and zoom camera at the highest
available point on the tower. This will have a 360 degree view and let me
assure you, the view is beautiful. Downtown Knoxville, Seymour, Maryville,
Clinch Mountains, SmokyMountains,Wears Valley are just a few points
that can be seen. This will also be available to the club and our site host.
The club voted to acquire a Kenwood TS-480 SAT for use at our site as a
remote HF station. As of this writing, it is in testing stage and not on the air
at out site. Testing should be complete soon and members will be able to
access for our use.
If these new avenues work out, the possibilities are endless as to what we
can do. Use your imagination and let’s get some new ideas circulating for
projects to do. The Board of RACK is open to all suggestions and we
welcome them. Some members have voiced negative concerns of where the
club is headed. Having said that, I want you to ask yourself the question; if
every club member were just like me, what kind of club would our club be?
I want every member and new member to find an area in the club that is
your expertise or interest and share it with the rest of us. I encourage you to
be our guest speaker at a meeting. We would love to hear your knowledge
and experience, so share it with your fellow amateurs.
The Club’s Hamfest in June is on schedule for yet another great event. Lou,
WB3JKQ, is organizing with vendors, large and small to assure another
successful and profitable undertaking RACK. We will be needing volunteers
for many positions to work and make it fun for all.
Just a reminder, annual dues are being accepted at this time. Our treasurer,
Ron, KJ4IAU, will be writing receipts for those who want to pay dues at our
meeting. You can always mail them to our PO Box if you choose. Our
membership is down from years past, so please bring a friend or fellow Ham
and join in the fun of being a RACK member.
I look forward to seeing you at a future meeting.
Keep our Military troops in your prayers,
Jim Norman, N4CFB
President, Radio Amateur Club of Knoxville