First off, I need to apologize to all of the club member that were at the April club meeting. I told, I guess, a white lie. I fudged the truth a bit. I did my best Fred Astaire dance around the questions about the clubs new repeater.
Several months ago, when we booked Chris, the Yaesu representative, to come speak, we were seriously considering the Yaesu Fusion repeater. In fact, I had already asked for a quote. Then I read the reviews on eHam and passed that information on to the rest of the board. We decided that the Yaesu repeater would not fit our needs. By the time Chris showed up to speak, we had already purchased a Bridgecom repeater. Actually, we already had it and it was installed the next day after the meeting. I just felt that it would be unfair to invite someone to come speak about their product when we had just purchased from a competitor.
So now a bit about the new repeater. Like I said, it’s made by Bridgecom. They are located in Missouri and it is engineered and built in the good ol’ U S of A. One thing that you will notice is that the courtesy tone is quick to happen. Depending on how long it takes for your transceiver to get back over to receive, you may not hear it on your end. You will have to watch your S meter to see the RF hang for a second. This has the advantage that you can make quick exchanges back and forth without waiting for the tone and the carrier to drop off. The down side to this is that if you are mobile and have some picket fencing on your signal, the repeater may drop you for an instant. You’ll get the beep and it will pick you back up immediately. We might have to add some delay to remedy that. Please give us some time to get it all dialed in.
Some other items of interest;
June 16th there will be an emergency drill at Eisenhower Medical Center. We will do a quick presentation at the next meeting.
June 25/26 is Field Day. We will be activating the City of Palm Springs EOC. A sign up sheet will go around at the next meeting. Please sign up for a shift that you would like to work. BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) if you want to work CW. Others wise we will be working 2 SSB stations and one digital station.
Summer break. Last year we met at Manhattan In The Desert for dinner on the 3rd Tuesday of the month. Everyone enjoyed it and had a good time just socializing. We plan to continue the tradition.
73
Glenn
WB6RLC
