Metro DX Club December Meeting Minutes
December 17, 2021
We continued to meet via ZOOM for the December meeting. Thanks to John K9EL for his help.
The meeting was called to order by our President Jim N9TK. In attendance, besides Jim were K9EL, W9ILY, WA9GQK, K9GA, NE9A, K9NR, NY9H, K9CT, K9UB, W9PDS, W9MK, K9ARZ, K9DRS, KA9IUC, WT2P, KC9EOQ, W0LEN, K9NU, W9AP, WB9Z, NV9L, K9NB, AA9DY, K9KE, K9LSH, K9PY, W9JGH, WA9LEY.
Some of our attendees were guests.
HEALTH AND WELFARE No reports
OLD BUSINESS
MINUTES A motion was made by George K9GA to approve the November minutes. The motion was seconded and approved.
TREASURER’S REPORT John W9ILY reports that the Club had income of $389.08 which was from dues payments. The odd number was due to a member not using the friends and family option in PayPal. John reports that the Club had no expenses for the month. Detailed Treasurer reports are filed on our groups.io site.
WUST There was an inquiry but no application received yet.
CONTESTS
FIELD DAY The Club had 1488 QSO’s and 7418 points. We placed 8th nationally in our 2E category. The highest scorer in our category had 2557 Q’s. Thanks again to Jim N9TK for hosting the event.
KING OF THE HILL Our year end qualifier is the RAC contest this weekend. John W9ILY will tally the KOH totals for the year and announce the King of the Mountain winner.
TO9W John K9EL thanked everyone for calling in during their DXpedition. Their use of Club Log real time updates and the competition for the band/mode certificates kept pileups huge the whole time. Band conditions were good. Lots of contacts on 160 but 10 and 12 were a bit disappointing. More detail can be found on the attached meeting recording. Photos have been posted on Facebook.
NEW BUSINESS
WINTERFEST Our annual event will be held on Jan 21, 2022 at Papa Joe’s in Orland Park. The save the date notice and a notice with all the details have been posted on the reflector. At this time, it looks like we will be proceeding with the event adhering to local COVID requirements. Please make your reservations soon so we get an idea who is coming. We will have plenty of nice door prizes.
DUES Dues for next year remain at $15 and can be paid to W9TY via PayPal (use friends and family option) or via check to the Club address on our website. John W9ILY reports that some members have not yet paid.
SPECIAL EVENT The Club is interested in running another special event station next year. We talked about a special event commemorating the 1st regularly scheduled broadcast from Chicago in 1922 from the Westinghouse building. There were sporadic evening hours broadcasts in 1921 but regularly scheduled programming didn’t begin until 1922. We are potentially looking at Labor Day to host the event. More info will be announced.
CROZET We talked about making an exception to our donation policy because Crozet is so high on the need list. An amount was not decided on yet. John W9ILY said he would check into the particulars about the Club being acknowledged on the QSL. We will revisit the $$ amount at a later time.
QTH.COM We discussed making a donation to QTH.COM and decided on $50. George K9GA made a motion to make the donation, it was seconded by Mel NE9A and approved.
The meeting was adjourned followed by a round table discussion of members’ current activities.
There has been plenty of DX available to work as the bands improve.
Antenna work has been on some member’s agendas.
W9VT special event was announced.
PROGRAM We were happy to have Craig K9CT as our guest presenter. He gave a great talk and slide show of his assembling a world class contest and DX station set up for M2, M1 and SO2R. Some of his goals were to improve rate, mults and his DXCC Challenge count. He also enjoys guest operators operating at K9CT during contests. He went through some of the challenges he faced getting approvals for erecting his antenna farm and some upgrades coming up. There is much more detail on the attached video recording of our ZOOM meeting.
Here’s the ZOOM recording courtesy of John K9EL. http://www.k9el.com/MetroDX/MetroDX-17Dec2021.mp4
Submitted by Lee WA9LEY