March 15, 2023

  • Meeting Location: 605 Metropolis Street, Metropolis, IL
  • Meeting Conducted by: Jay Smock – President
  • Meeting Called to Order at: 1809 hrs.
  • The Pledge of Allegiance was led by: Jay Smock
  • Members Present:
    • Jay Smock – President
    • Ronnie Stone – Vice President
    • Geoff Williams – Secretary
    • Aidan Carnes
    • Lloyd Baker – Volunteer Examination Coordinator
    • Brian Horn – Massac County Director of Emergency Management
  • Guests:
    • Eddy :Illinois Eddy: Sobkowiak
    • Chuck Bonifield
  • Minutes of the February 15th meeting were read and accepted as is.
  • The application for membership submitted by Mr. Eddy Sobkowiak was read. A motion was made to accept, seconded, voted on, and passed unanimously.
  • The application for membership submitted by Mr. Chuck Bonifield was read. A motion was made to accept, seconded, voted on, and passed unanimously.
    • Both applicants are past members of the old club, Massac County Amateur Radio Club.
  • Club logo project: Discussion was opened up regarding debate on the design of an official club logo.  There were many great ideas thrown out and enthusiastically discussed.
    • Aidan Carnes volunteered to draw out the ideas on his I-Pad. He will refine the drawing later on.
    • Basically, the design will be a circle with the club name encircling the top ¾ or so with the club call sign, WS1ERA located at the bottom of the outside circle. Inside the circle will be an outline of the southernmost 1/3rd of the state of Illinois showing the placement the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Situated upon the state facsimile will be an antenna tower with US Naval style RF bolts emanating from the antenna area. Colors have yet to be determined. Further discussion will be held at next month’s meeting.
  • Field antenna @ the Ft. Massac State Park pavilion: Jay and Aidan will work on getting the antenna refurbished and ready to use at the upcoming Field Day event.
  • Memorandum of Understanding with the Office of Massac County Emergency Management:  The memorandum of understanding was discussed with Brian Horn – Director of EM present to provide explanations and answers to questions. At the end of discussion a motion was made to accept the M of U, the motion was seconded and a vote by hand was made. The motion passed to accept the agreement with 7 members voting in the affirmative, O negatives, and Brian Horn recusing himself as the Director of EM.
    • The memorandum of understanding will now move forward to the chairman of the Massac County Board of Commissioners for his signature, then back to our club president, James “Jay” Smock, for his signature.
  • Testing of applicants for amateur radio licensing: Lloyd Baker – VEC has made much progress toward our being able to test applicants for FCC licensing. We will be able to test both under W5YI and ARRL once all the paperwork has been completed and affirmed.
  • Field Day – June 24th event: The most important aspect of food was discussed with much relish. A debate between bar-b-que pork shoulder and homemade pizza was had. With no clear winner among our membership it was thought that perhaps we should have both.
  • The meeting was adjourned at 1931 hrs.

Minutes submitted by Geoff Williams – Secretary