Coon Valley Amateur Radio Club

CVARC Mini Minutes
Aug 3,2010

Meeting at the Bayard City Park **Annual Club Picnic**
Members Present: 5 with SpousesAudubon ARES-- Arnie- reported no activeAudubon EMA --Les no report
Carroll ARES -- Mark/ Dean reported on the continuing talks with Carroll CO. EMS

Repeater News:

Scranton-- has new trustee
Audubon --decision on the repeater building continues

OLD Business:

Field Day-Dean and Dave reported that it was a Bust. As the weather was miserable and unique complications and other pucker factors presented themselves, upon the members present. Next Year !

New Business:

A birthday card was sent to Frank Meyers and signed by all present
A motion to continue the picnics was approved.The new ham store has closed
Up Coming Events

Next meeting Sept 7,2010 at Bayard Library

April 1 2010 ...... Scranton / Audubon Link
Recently work was done to the Scranton 444.300 MHz repeater to
get it back on the air.. Scranton is linked into Audubon 147.120
MHz and Rockwell City 145.490 MHz. Scranton is now also linked to
N0BKB repeater near Greenfield 444.700 MHz.tone 114.8. BKB is linked
into the National Weather Service.  

April 11 2010 -- update :

April 11 2010 -- update : The link Transmitter has been repaired and the
Link System is now working properly. It requires Touch Tone codes to
turn it on all members have those.

August  2010 -- update :

The Scranton UHF repeater has changed Call Sign again.
The new Call Sign when approved by Iowa Repeater Assn.
Will be N0VPR. 

It will still be available for Storm Watch use

I thought I'd share a photo of my VHF yagi antenna on my roof.  It is an Arrow Antenna 146-4S. I had the antenna center mounted on the mast and I just changed it to end mount. I also have the Arrow J-Pole and I have nothing bad to say about either antenna.  They both work very good for the price.

My SWR immediately improved, it was around 3:1, now it's less than 1.5:1 which should help me get into the repeater much better.  I use a 20 watt ICOM in my house most of the time and I can usually get into the repeater.

I also have a 50 watt Yaesu but it's a pain to move it from my jeep into the house but when I do i have a much stronger signal into the repeater.

I'm using Davis RF BURY-FLEX coax cable, it's a low loss cable that still allows it to be fairly flexible.  It's got a loss of about 1.7 dB  at 144 Mhz per 100 feet and I'm using less than 50 feet of it.

If anyone else has photos of thier antenna or radios that they want to share let me know and I'll get them up here. -Grant - K0SIE