OCRA Board Meeting
Attendees:
Dan (KR4UB), Mike (KK4BPH), Dave (W4SAR), Karen (KD4YJZ), Sherri (WB4OSU), Lad (W4ORD), and Keith (W1KES)
Topics:
Treasure Report: 73 membership dues are current and an appropriate reserve balance is in our accounts
UNC Repeater
Dan mentioned that Steve has worked with Tower Engineering Group. Dan and Steve will request a quote from Tower to finalize the repeater drawings, and install the repeater. Dan and Steve will bring the quote back to the Board for discussion.
Back Up Repeater
Dave made an executive decisions to purchase a backup repeater, after consulting with the Board. The new backup repeater is identical to the one currently in operation. This particular model is now discontinued, thus the urgency to purchase. The new repeater was $1,000 and can be cloned to provide additional continuity for the existing repeater for many years.
For comparison, a newer repeater model is roughly $4000. While the new repeaters are both digital and analogue, the additional cost would not have provided an identical clone to the existing repeater. With the cost of tower work now around $1,000 per incident, cloning the existing repeater and having a ready backup made better fiscal sense than purchasing a newer repeater model.
OCRA Christmas Dinner
The OCRA Christmas Dinner will be held again at the Hillsborough Exchange Club on Monday, December 11. The goal is to secure 60 attendees, which will keep the cost below $20 per person. The Board discussed having attendees pay in advance to ensure we reach a commitment level that is cost affordable. Please consider securing your reservation by making payment at the November 13, OCRA Membership meeting. We will also make payment available via PayPal. We will discuss this topic more at the November 13 OCRA Membership meeting.
Field Day results – still not known.
Hopefully, we should know by the November 13 meeting. Additionally, the Board discussed establishing a food committee for this year’s Field Day. We need dedicated resources that are not operating the stations to secure the food and prepare the meals. This topic will be discussed more in early 2018.
The Board discussed sponsoring the Bouvet DXpedition. However, with the DFMA club already supporting the DXpedition, and with many members having dual membership in both OCRA and DFMA, the Board decided to encourage members of both groups to either support the DFMA sponsorship, or donate individually.