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Welcome to the MARC Newsletter a publication of the Michigan Area Repeater Council. This news letter is published quarterly in conjunction with the quarterly business meetings. If you prefer a columnized version of this newsletter click here for the standard version. |
| The September meeting is a physical meeting to take place in Lansing, MI. |
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President’s Update: This September’s meeting will be held near Lansing. Directions are located in this newsletter. The meeting will include elections for president, vice president and one Director. All are encouraged to attend and vote for their candidates, or you may run for office yourself. (You must be a member of MARC one day prior to the election to be eligible to run). Coordination requests are mostly up to date with just a few applications currently in process and six more are on my waiting list for an available pair. Again, I would like to emphasize the ongoing problem of coordinated repeaters that are not on the air or are not providing the minimum coverage necessary to hold a coordination. (10 miles) If you have one of these repeaters, please correct the problem issues or return the frequency pair back to the pool. Also, if you have knowledge of one of these repeaters, please send MARC the info so that a notice can be sent out. Recently, an off the air repeater was reported to MARC by a concerned ham. This issue was dealt with and the result is that now there are now two pairs that were not available before the notice came to MARC’s attention. Thank you! I need repeater pairs in order issue new coordinations. Please check out the MARC web site. All the newsletters and the monthly updates are available to everyone. The updates show all new, updated and decoordinated repeaters that the MARC staff has been working on. Dave, WD8DJB, is in charge of the data base. He checks and enters all the updates in addition to reports to the ARRL and numerous other tasks for MARC. Dan, N8WKM, our vice president, does a great job on this newsletter and coordinates repeaters on 220 MHz and 900 MHz and above. Thanks to both of these amateur radio operators for volunteering. MARC’s secretary and board members also put in their time to help the council work through some changing times. MARC has to continue to evolve as the technology available to amateur radio advances. The MARC web page also has an article that would be of great benefit to anyone that is interested in repeater coordination. The article “everything you wanted to know about getting a coordination”, is well worth the read. It was written by a former MARC officer and has very good information on how the coordination process works. The article details with what the applicant must do and what the coordinator goes through during the process of a coordination attempt.
Please visit the MARC web site and
check the activity
reports to see what new and renewal applications have been processed.
----------------------------------------------- Anual Business Meeting Information:
Database Manager's Corner
We have a number of TDS forms that are overdue. Over 27% of the
repeaters in our
database have not been updated in two or more year’s. So take a
minute and check
your entry in the MARC Repeater Directory to see if it is time to
update your records.
Annual Business Meeting
This month brings the annual business meeting where we hold
a physical meeting in the Lansing area. This includes the
elections for board positions that will expire. This year,
the president, Secretary and one Director postioin will be
up for election.
Treasurer's Report
MARC Funds balance on 05/31/2012 was $ 4,539.35
Respectfully Submitted, Supporting Detail MARC Funds as of 05/31/2012
MARC Meeting Minutes
Date: June 2, 2012 Meeting called to order by Phil at: 1:03 PM.
Motion to approve minutes from the March meeting were made by Jim,
seconded by Dave
vote taken, minutes approved. Old Business:
Fred is still working on some repeater issues in his area of the
state. New Business: Dave stated he shipped the MARC laptop off for repair after backing up all data. Dave asked if we should extend the warranty for 2 years, price $189.99. Computer is one year old. The cost of the laptop was approx $800.00. Discussion. The consensus of the board was to not buy the warranty, and just replace the laptop, or repair it if needed. Jim discussed DMR repeaters and how the digital signal can open the squelch of an analog receiver. Phil discussed mototrbo channel separations and made a correction of a statement in the last minutes which are found in the June 2012 newsletter: The minutes stated that mototrbo digital signals had a 12.5 kHz bandwidth. This was incorrect, the necessary bandwidth of 7.6 KHz is found on the mototrbo emission designator. (7K60FXE). It appears that digital signals that have less than 6.25 kHz necessary bandwidth may use 6.25 kHz channel spacing (d-star designator is 6K00F7W) and any wider signals must use the 12.5 kHz channel spacing, but not exceed 12.5 kHz. These guidelines are for commercial bands, but can be a guide for our amateur frequencies. Since our two meter band has only 20 kHz channel separation and the analog fm signals are 16 kHz wide, (+- 8 kHz from center frequency), it appears that the mototrbo signal is too wide to be compatible with the existing fm analog on a splinter channel. Channel spacing on 440 is 25 kHz and therefore offers an opportunity to place mototrbo repeaters adjacent to fm analog repeaters as long as additional distance separation is provided. The present resolution #11 requires 50 mile adjacent channel spacing to FM repeaters for these splinter channels.
Phil proposed the following for consideration by the Board:
The resolution would now read:
Repeater separation standards will be a minimum of 70 miles between co-channel repeaters. Adjacent channel spacing between digital repeaters will be left to coordinators discretion; however spacing to adjacent channel analog repeaters will be no less than 50 miles. Repeaters that are offered this provisional coordination may have those coordinations changed as needed. Each person who is offered this provisional coordination will acknowledge that this provisional coordination does not offer protection under the DOG and that they are responsible to work to alleviate any and all interference complaints proven to be a result of the operation of the digital repeater. Each person will also acknowledge an understanding of the DOG as outlined by MARC By-Laws. Discussion followed. Fred made a motion to make the changes to Resolution #11 as stated. Supported by Dan. Motion passed. The discussion included the acknowledgement that splinter channels are coordinated for digital signals only and fm analog is not a part of the coordination. Operation of narrow or wide band fm may cause interference to adjacent channel users. The coordinated digital repeater has no protection in this case. It is recommended that the trustee maintain digital only operation on a splinter channel. Phil has not had time to work on coordination by coverage area. Phil met with some adjacent state coordinators at Dayton and found that Wisconsin has no adjacent channel requirement for full channel coordinations. Fred was contacted by a person from west Michigan that wanted to change the sponsorship of a coordination. Discussion followed. Phil stated these can be changed, but must be changed in writing by sending a letter to the data base administrator. Dave stated he has followed this practice when he has been asked to change a sponsor. Dave requests a letter to be sent to him formally requesting the sponsorship name change. When Dave receives the letter he makes the change in the data base. This procedure will continue. It was restated that a coordination is automatically dissolved if the sponsor dies and does not have a secondary sponsor. Fred requested that we add a line to the TDS form asking for a back-up sponsor designation. Phil called for an election committee for the elections to be held at the MARC meeting September 8 (in Lansing). The elections will be for president, secretary, and one board member. Dan, Jim and Dave agreed to be the election committee and Dan will run the elections. Phil polled the incumbents to see if they would run for the same positions and all agreed. Phil asked if any of the visitors would be interested in running, no one offered. Fred and Dan thanked Phil for his coordination work. The Lansing meeting will be held at the Fire Dept in Delta Twp. (Lansing area) in September. Adjournment:
Motion to adjourn made by Jim, seconded by Fred at 2:02 |
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Annual Business Meeting And Elections: This is a reminder that the September meeting will be a physical meeting to take place in Delta Township (Lansing Area) where annual elections will be held. If you have nominations for open positions please email Dan Thompson N8WKM using his_callsign@miarc.com. Nominations will remain open until just prior to voting.
Offices that will be open for election this year are: |
| MARC Officers | Appointed Positions |
| President: Phil Manor W8IC | Frequency Coordinator 902MHz: & up Dan Thompson N8WKM |
| Vice President: Dan Thompson N8WKM | Frequency Coordinator 440MHz: Phil Manor W8IC |
| Secretary: Ann Manor KT8F | Frequency Coordinator Links & Control: Phil Manor W8IC |
| Treasurer: Dave Johnson WD8DJB | Database Manager: Dave Johnson WD8DJB |
| Director: Fred Moses W8FSM | Newsletter Editor: Dan Thompson N8WKM |
| Director: James Kvochick WB8AZP |
