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 non-columnized version of this newsletter click here for the wide version. |
The September meeting is a physical meeting to take place in the Lansing, MI area. |
President’s Column: Summer has been fun, but short. The major issue confronting MARC is the repeater directory. The ARRL is no longer in charge, as they have a private firm collecting and printing the book, as well as providing web based repeater information. The labor involved, privacy, payment and control of the data are of concern to the MARC Board members and many repeater owners. This issue took up a lot of time at the last electronic meeting, and I expect it to be discussed again at the meeting on September 9, 2017. I would like to explain the issues further, but it seems like all the facts are still not available. What I have heard so far is not very clear to me. Dan, N8WKM, our newsletter editor and VP, is working on getting the correct info directly from RFinder. Hope to see you at the meeting. This September's meeting will be held at the Delta Twp. Fire station near Lansing. Directions are included in this newsletter. It is the only meeting each year where we can actually meet in person. The three other quarterly meetings are held on the Internet with FreeConferenceCall.com software. All are welcome to join in at at any meeting. 73, Phil W8IC ----------------------------------------------- Annual Business Meeting Information: 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 Vice President, Treasurer and one Director position will be
up for election.
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MARC Meeting Minutes
Date: June 3, 2017 Meeting called to order by Phil at: 1:05pm.
Motion to approve minutes from the March 2017 meeting was made by
Dan, seconded by Bob, vote taken, minutes approved. Old Business: Dan reported on a talk he had with the ARRL CEO Tom Gallagher. He met Tom at Dayton and discussed the ARRL/Rfinder repeater directory. Main issues included; communication from the ARRL, coordinates of repeaters, ability to make changes to the data, protection of the data (contract), support of coordination bodies by the ARRL, and so forth. Hopefully, Tom, at the ARRL will consider the points discussed and take some action to have the directory work well for all coordination bodies. Suggestions included a purge of data once a year. Also, ARRL should maintain a database that coordinators can make changes in. Dan will inform members of the area coordinators who attended the meeting last year in Wisconsin, of his meeting in Dayton. There is no national coordinators group that is viable and which has ongoing communications on this subject that MARC is aware of. No changes to report on the process of coordination by propagation software. This is something that Dave Karr from Wisconsin is working on. Software he has written is to be updated. New Business: Dan will try to put the September MARC meeting on Free Web Meeting. This may or may not be possible at the Delta Township location. Adjournment:
Motion to adjourn made by Dan, seconded by Jeff. ----------------------------------------------- Vice President's Thoughts Our new coordinators and assistant coordinators are working out well. Thanks to their work and a the persistence of Bob, N8ZCC we have better up to date information in our database and we have had few frequencies returned to the pool. If you get a letter or a call from Bob, please go easy on him as he is doing a thankless and tough job. The saga of the repeater directory continues. I am sure there will be discussion about a few possibilities on how to publish yet maintain the integrity of our data. We will be making an attempt to take the online meeting to the physical meeting this time around. Unfortunately I don't know how well this will work, nor do I have a way to test it until we actually try to use it. There is only so much I can test, and the rest is up to hoping that I have some good theories. The only promise I can make is that I am going to try.
To access the online portion of the meeting, please see the
June Newsletter and follow the instructions.
If we are able to make it work we will be there.
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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 Jim K8JK or Dave WD8DJB using their_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 | Frequency Coordinator: Bob Walchli N8ZCC |
Director: Jeff Oberg KB8SXK | Database Manager: Dave Johnson WD8DJB |
Director: James Kvochick K8JK | Newsletter Editor: Dan Thompson N8WKM |