The transmitters and antennas are stowed away for another year as we wind down Field Day 2021.  First, a huge thank you to everyone who ventured out to the Woodlot, despite the threats of never-ending rain (that thankfully never happened).  It was great to have so many of our newest club members present to observe and even try their hand at contesting on HF.  I also wanted to thank directly KD8PUD for arranging our Fulton County 911 coordinator for a site visit today.  There will be more on our conversation with Richard Kilgour coming soon, especially how we can have our emergency services efforts tied more directly to the county.  We were also treated to a site visit from our ARRL Ohio Section Manager, Tom Sly, who took time away from his radio club to venture around the state, making a stop in our little corner.  

The meeting was called to order at 7:30pm by Bryan Patterson (KB8ELG) with 16 members and guests in attendance, the pledge of allegiance was given by all.
 
Members in Distress: no report
 
Treasurers Report: KB8ELH gave the report (balances not published online). A motion was made by KG8FM to accept the report and seconded by KE8OKA. All were in favor.
 
Bills to Present: 

• KD8KBU presented a bill for the door prizes for the Summer Hamfest of $153.31.  A motion was made by WB8ZOI to pay the billl, seconded by W8TUX.  All were in favor
• WD8KRS presented the bill for the Port-a-john for $202.50 (2 months).  A motion made by KE8ITJ, and seconded by KE8KDS to pay the invoice.  All were in favor.
• KB8ELG presented a bill for supplies for the Summer Hamfest for $91, along with a bill for the rental of the Ruihley Park Shelter for the Winter Hamfest for $200 ($50 deposit is reimbursable). A motion was made by WD8KRS and seconded by KG8FM to pay the bill.  All were in favor.

 
Education/VE Committee:

Turning attention back to Field Day, if you plan on running a radio during Field Day, or if you are planning on helping an operator log QSOs, it will help to familiarize yourself with the logging program we use.  It does require a laptop, but the software will run on just about any version of windows down to XP, along with macOS and Linux.  If you have an older laptop not used for anything, it is probably ideal for this software.  The only requirement is the laptop has an 802.11g as a minimum WiFi controller.

If you do not have a laptop suitable (and think twice about bringing your high-end laptop out to the Field), let me know, I have several repurposed older models which I don't care if they get rained on or something accidentally spilled on them.

The software for Windows can be downloaded here: http://k8bxq.org/tmp/fdlogexe.zip

There is no installer, just unzip it to the desktop, open the folder and run fdlog.exe.  Contact KD8KBU@arrl.net if you need it for Linux/macOS.

Happy Sunday morning to all. If you are a league member, this months QST has a great pullout section in the middle for Field Day 2021. I wanted to open a dialogue regarding bonus points for meeting certain criteria for the event. Some of these are "gimme's" while others we have always struggled with to either get someone to spearhead the effort, or if it could even apply to our circumstances. What follows is a list of various bonuses up for grabs, and what we have done historically:

1. 100% emergency power: this is a automatic for us since we run on generator power for the event

2. Media Publicity: I have typically submitted a formal press release to the various news outlets around June 1, so this is also automatic

3. Set up in Public place: We can debate this one, but we typically consider the Roth Park a public place during those events

4. Public Information Table: We have set this up in years past, usually with various flyers we can get from the ARRL. We skipped last year, but should be able to do this again, especially if we setup a GOTA table were we can combine efforts.

Our stated club meeting will be tonight on the air at 7:30pm on the K8BXQ 147.195 repeater. Hope to hear you then.

This contest is still very much in the early planning stages, but we have marked a date we want to attempt this on. September 25, 2021 will be the first ever (that we know of) Masonic Lodges on the Air contest, a.k.a. CQ More Light!

The goal is simple, activate as many Masonic Lodges as possible and try to log a QSO with them.  More rules and scoring will be forthcoming, but for now, know that the date for this is intended to be the Saturday of (or immediately following) the Autumnal Equinox. You do not need to be a Freemason to participate in this contest, in fact, we would encourage any Masonic Lodge to open their doors (or property) to host an event with local HAMs. 

Keep checking back as we expand into Social Media and provide further content related to the upcoming contest.