Well, it has been an interesting month for us Desert RATS. I wish I had a cheery message for you this month, but it’s going to be more of a June Gloom .. in April.
First off, Hamfest did not do as well as we would have liked. We lost a good chunk of change this year, as well as the previous years. We tried more advertising and the numbers through the gate were the same as the last 2 years. We tried taking a big step up on the raffle prizes. We did increase sales, but not by much. All in all, The Pavilion is just too expensive of a venue. We need the ball field for the swap meet (that did grow this year) and for RV parking for the vendors. We could cut the raffle prizes, but lots come for the raffles. Many like the swap area. With HRO deciding not to support the event, the numbers may continue to drop and with fewer hams in attendance, other vendors will surely follow.
So, my friends, the future of Hamfest looks pretty gloomy. Before the board decides to make a definite decision on what will happen, we will have an open meeting for all of those club members that may have some ideas or just want to have an input.
In case you missed the February meeting we had quite a surprise waiting for us. It seems that the city has been having issues with some of the folks using the facility were we meet. To remedy this, they simply pulled the plug on all outside groups using the meeting room. Of course, we did not hear of this until the meeting was just ready to start.
Thanks to club members that have contacts with Palm Springs Fire Department, we found a meeting room. It is at the PSFD training facility at 3000 E Alejo Rd. Palm Springs. It’s pretty easy to find. It actually is about a block from where we held our meeting. It’s 2 blocks down E. Alejo towards the airport off of Farrell. See the map. Watch for a big RATS banner.
Good news, bad news. Bad news is: in case you don’t listen to the RATS repeater on 146.940, it has been operating very poorly lately. A week or so ago a team consisting of the repeaters trustee, Gary KD6QLT, Rick K6VE and I, went up on Edom Hill to take a look at the repeater. Rick brought along a station monitor and loads of other gear and we did a full check out on the repeater. All checked out well.. except for the receiver section. Now most receivers have an input sensitivity of around 10 microvolts. Our poor repeater has been limping along with an input sensitivity of about 10 millivolts !!!
Good news is: we have a new repeater on order and it should be here in a few weeks and installed a week or so after that. So it has not been all bad news this month.
Oh yeah, the big winds took down my dipole. Soon to be back up. Sheesh, what a month.
See ya on the bands.
Glenn WB6RLC
