Michigan Area Repeater Council

Web Site: http://www.qsl.net/miarc/      May, 1999       e-mail: miarc@egroups.com

MARC Minutes:

MARC has not received minutes for the regular meeting from our former Secretary in time for publication in this newsletter. They will be published in a future newsletter when they are received. Here are the minutes for the special meeting which followed:

Amendment to March 7,1999 minutes.

At a special Board meeting held after the regular quarterly meeting for the purpose of appointing Board officers to fill the vacated offices due to the resignations of the President Larry Tissue, Treasurer Jeff Frank, Secretary Terrie Dennistion and Database Manager, Linda Frank. In attendance were Kelly Karpp, Vice President, Dave Oesch, and Joel Goldberg Directors, Bill Gilbert and Bruce Winchell, Coordinators. Following the bylaws, the Vice-President assumed the position of Acting President to fill the remainder of the resigned President's term. By unanimous vote of all present, the following appointments were made to complete the term of the resigned elected officers. Dave Oesch accepted the Treasurer office, Joel Goldberg accepted appointment as Newsletter Editor and Bruce Winchell was appointed Database Manager. Kelly will also take the secretary duties until one can be appointed. Motion was made and seconded to adjourn Motion carried.

Submitted by Kelly Karpp

Changes on the MARC, Inc. Board

As you may have heard, there has been a major reorganization of your Michigan Area Repeater Council, Inc. Board. The President, Treasurer, Secretary, and Database manager all submitted resignations effective at the close of the March 7, 1999 quarterly meeting. Their resignations were regretfully accepted. The remaining MARC Board wishes them well in their future endeavors and thanks them for the countless hours they spent on past MARC business. The remaining board held a special reorganization meeting and we adopted the following positions until the next scheduled election.

Kelly Karpp KB8RWG Acting-President

Dave Oesch N8BIT Acting-Treasurer

Bruce Winchell N8UT Acting-DB Manager

Joel Goldberg W8HIU News Letter Publisher

The annual election will be held at our meeting September 12,1999 will be for the following offices Vice-President, Treasurer, and one Director. We will be appointing a nominating committee at our quarterly meeting on June 5 1999 at Grand Rapids. We still need to appoint a Secretary to fill the remainder of the term.

We have made great strides in improving our web page and our thanks to Dave Johnson WD8DJB our web master. If you have not visited it, please do so at http://www.qsl.net/miarc/. We have added pages listing meeting dates and location, as well as a repeater directory page. For those interested in keeping up with MARC activities and changes to our web page please register for Netmind. MARC will be including notices of date and location of the next meeting along with other special notices as required.

There have been many updates to the TDS (Technical Data Sheet) page. We have included a TDS blank with this newsletter. If you have completed current TDS please keep it for future use, or if you are not the responsible person required to file this TDS please see that it gets to the responsible party. The completed TDS for each system coordinated must be sent to Bruce Winchell N8UT 5354 Baker Rd., Bridgeport, MI. 48722. MARC is going to start enforcing the existing Bylaws and Standards that had been in place. If you don't have a copy, they are available on our web page. If you would like a copy of the Bylaws, Standards, and Procedures and don't have web access, send a SASE to cover 20 printed pages to MARC inc. PO. Box 127, Oscoda, MI. 48750. I will return a set to you.

MARC inc. has decided to move up the due date of the annual TDS to July 15, 1999. This move will give our Database manager more time to verify, enter the received TDS into the Database as well as sending out notices of violation to those that have ignored the (once in two year requirement) MARC inc. will start de-coordinating procedures for those systems that totally ignore this requirement. This action will be required before the due date of the ARRL publishing in the upcoming Repeater Directory. MARC will include only those systems with a current TDS on file to the data supplied to the ARRL for publishing. Due to conditions beyond the present MARC Board's control no updated data was submitted to ARRL for the year 1999/2000 directory, the data in that directory will be a copy of the 1998/1999 data. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.

We have published our data on our web page with notations as to the last received data date. Please check it out and inform the responsible party of the delinquent data. Due to the lack of available frequency pairs, MARC inc. will be aggressively addressing those repeaters that have not supplied the required TDS, as the current standards require at least once in a two-year period. We understand the procedures that some of the past MARC Board's used. However, be advised THIS new Board has the intent to follow closely the current Bylaws and Standards. So, if you haven't supplied an up to date TDS please consider this as your first warning. We will be sending out letters requesting updates with the possible loss of coordination as a result of not replying in a timely manner. We understand this may be a pretty stiff attitude however this move is imperative if we are ever to come up with a good usable database from which to rely on for future coordination's.

Please look at our published data on our web page, if you find a repeater listed in our data but not on the air please advise us so we can work to either get the system back on the air or the frequency pair returned to the unused pool for re-coordinating.

To all trustee's of quadrant class systems please review: I. Coordination Standards, D Quadrant coordination class # 2 as published in the MARC Standards. This standard will be strictly adhered to in order to maintain your quadrant status.

Notice reference your MARC dues. Please note the date under your address on the address label that indicates the last received dues we have listed in our database. Dave has taken the duties of treasurer and has sat up a MARC, Inc. checking account. Please make all check's payable to MARC, Inc. mark in memo MARC DUES. Dave's address is Dave Oesch 4585 Green Meadow Lane, White Lake, MI. 48383-1809

MARC ACTION TAKEN

I have sent a letter of request for cooperation to the listed trustee of the Utica Shelby Emergency Communication Association Inc. 147.180 repeater. Reference a letter from The Gladwin Area Amateur Radio Club stating interference on a regular basis. MARC will be working with both organizations to resolve the problem.

Kelly Karpp, KB8RWG

Acting-President MARC inc.

Your MARC Board has taken a very positive stand on ethics and how our Michigan Lower Peninsula repeaters will be coordinated. As you read Kelley's remarks you should begin to realize how serious we are. There are a few major points and policies that we want to cover:

• Information sharing. This Board has established a procedure that insures that all Board members receive the same information. When you e-mail to us at the miarc@egroups.com each Board member and Coordinator receives a copy of this mail.
• Consolidation of our data base. Over the past several years the MARC has utilized several different data bases. Thanks to major efforts by Bruce, N8UT, all of this information has been consolidated into one data base. This will make our work of checking your information easier. It will also permit us to submit this information to the ARRL on an annual basis for inclusion in their Repeater Directory.
• Teamwork for coordination of new repeaters. Each of the two Directors are working with one of the frequency coordinators to help insure accuracy and to see that all new coordination approvals receive a coordination number.
• Opening of frequencies currently not in use, but coordinated to a repeater sponsor. We are working diligently to remove what we call 'paper repeaters' from our data base. Once this is done we can start to assign these frequencies to new applicants, those who are on our waiting list will appreciate this effort.
• Changing the format of the Technical Data Sheet. More information is needed for us to do a better job for you. The additional information on the TDS will help us do this.

YOUR COOPERATION IS NEEDED IF WE ARE TO SUCCEED.

We ask that you 'put on the back shelf' the problems that have occurred in previous years. None of us can change history. We are your elected representatives and are working for you. Work with us to insure that the MARC will be known as one of the best repeater councils in the United States. You can help by providing us with an up-to-date TDS this year. Once we have these in our system, we will expect you to renew it once every two years.

We are going to uphold the MARC policies and are in compliance . Attend our quarterly meetings and offer your opinions, your support and your assistance.

We are looking forward to a very good year as your representatives. We believe that you will be pleased with our new levels of performance.

Joel Goldberg, W8HIU and Dave Oesch, Directors

One 2 Meter coordination and one 6 Meter coordination completed this quarter. I am currently working on one more 2 Meter coordination and two 6 Meter coordination. Be advised that 2 Meter frequency pairs are few and far between, so your opportunity to obtain one is very limited, if not almost impossible at this time.

Bill Gilbert, K5EPT

During the quarter there were two 220 coordinations completed. One was new and one was a re-coordination/move. One 440 move/re-coordination is approved and awaiting completion of the move. Two more new 440 repeater coordinations are nearing completion. Finalization of 7 link coordinations is very near. Two more requests for 440 coordinations could not be completed due to non-availability of pairs for the requested locations. Two new 220 requests and three new 440 requests have been recently received and are in mid-process.

R. Bruce Winchell

The MARC database has been consolidated, verified and compiled into a single entity. This effort involved over 600 man-hours since March 7 to achieve. Nearly 6200 entries, from 15 separate tables, in two different database programs have been boiled down to about 1000 entries in one program. About 400 of these entries are in the address portion of the DB. 694 entries deal directly with repeater and link data. A great deal of the data came from an old DOS based program which was highly contaminated with machine code from multiple crashes over the years. The cleaning process took three weeks (200+ hours) before we could begin to manipulate the data. A new user-friendly interface has been designed to make the database very easy for MARC personnel to use. A new and simple paper back-up/verification system is also in place.

The database is now in the best shape it has been in for several years. However, the accuracy of the database is still highly compromised by lack of current data from recent, accurate and complete TDS forms. We have 149 entries from 1998-99, 239 entries from 1997, and the remaining 307 entries are spread between 1987 and 1996. Half of this last group is found in the year 1994. A paper copy of a TDS backs up approximately 30%of the total entries, and many of those paper copies are several years old.

My thanks to Mr. Lee White of Birch Run, a.k.a. Hi Tech Red Neck Computer Services, Inc. for his assistance with this project. Lee is an old business associate and is not a ham, but quickly saw the importance of this project and volunteered over 200 professional hours to it. Can you ignore this kind of effort on your behalf by someone who isn't even a ham? About half-way into the project Lee asked me a question and I quote: "Don't these people understand that the best way they can protect their rights and investments is to send you a simple report every two years?" I can't say it any better than that.

R. Bruce Winchell, N8UT

We get a lot of requests from the most populated areas of the State for more new coordinations. Most of the time, there is no chance of getting a new coordination in these areas. Why? Take a look at some stats from our database. Perhaps we should seriously look at making better use of what we already have available or helping a repeater sponsor improve what they have? There are 475 coordinated repeaters in lower Michigan.

Frequencies are usually coordinated in a triangular pattern in Lower Michigan. A typical scenario of placements for a frequency is (1)Southeast (2) Southwest and (3) somewhere near or north of M56. A new coordination up the center of the State is nearly impossible.

The number and close proximity of repeaters on adjacent channels is usually what stops coordinations from taking place in the most populated areas. When we are successful with a rare finding of a clear frequency pair in a heavily populated area, we are nearly always stopped by being too close to that frequency pair in an adjacent state or country.

A study of the database indicates that if you want a coordination south of a line between Ludington and Standish, you are 95% assured of failure to achieve your goal.

Oakland - 50, Wayne - 41, Genesee - 33, Kent - 29, Washtenaw - 20, Barrien - 16, Jackson and Ingham - 12, Muskegon/Monroe/Van Buren - 11, Macomb and Grand Traverse - 10, Saginaw and Livingston - 9

Kalamazoo/Oceana/St. Clair - 8, Calhoun/Eaton/Emmet/Ogemaw - 7, Clinton and Huron - 6, Lapeer/Ottawa/Roscommon/Shiawassee - 5, Alpena/Iosco/Leelanau/Mason/Tuscola/Wexford - 4

Allegan/Antrim/Bay/Cass/Cheboygan/Gladwin/Ionia/Lenawee/Mecosta/Midland/Montcalm/Newaygo/Otsego/St Joseph - 3, Branch/Isabella/Missaukee/Presque Isle - 2, and the remaining 13 counties only have one repeater

Northeast:  46      Northwest:   62      Southeast:  213      Southwest:  141

Name:_______________________________________ Callsign:____________________________

Address:_____________________________________ City:________________________________

State: __________ ZIP:___________________ E-mail:______________________________

Day Phone: (______)________________________ Night Phone (_____)___________________

Check one: [ ] Full Member ($15) [ ] Associate Member ($7.50)

Send Checks to: Dave Oesch, 4585 Green Meadow Lane, White Lake, MI. 48383-1809