The April 19, 2003 meeting was held at Red Coach Restaurant in Newton. The meeting was called to order at 9:18am by President Kent Harder. Members present were Lon Buller, David Duerksen, David Godshall, Bob Harder, Kent Harder, Roger Jost, Robin McDaniel, Bob Ogden, and Kent Stutzman.

March Minutes were read no corrections.

Treasurer's Report: Paid annual North Newton Post Office Box fee of $24.00 for a total of balance of $913.23.

RigBlaster: Thanks for Kent Stutzman running RigBlaster at his house, the Newton Amateur Radio Club repeater is now making regular announcements every hour between 6am and Midnight. There are four different announcements that alternate. Kent Stutzman can also have it announce severe weather, RACES activations, etc. Newsline runs at 7pm on Sunday, before the on-the-air meeting, and a shorter 15 minute version is often aired at 7pm on Friday and Saturday. He was wondering if he should run it at some additional times, perhaps a morning and afternoon for people working other shifts. Some suggestions were 10am Monday, 2pm Sunday, etc. Kent was asking for feedback on times, content, and behavior. He said it is currently not detecting when somebody else keys up so as to pause Newsline; he is looking at a solution. The RigBlaster hardware was about $139, and the EchoStation software was about $15. Kent will bring the exact costs to the next meeting for a vote for reimbursement.

Field Day: Looks like it is June 28-29 this year. Roger Jost said it looks like Newton's Chisolm Trail Festival is the same weekend. Bob reported there is a new Class F category for a station operating from an EOC location. Also, the GOTA station only requires 100 contacts instead of 400 for the bonus score.

Repeater: Robin said he things he should take a look at the repeater again since it hasn't been looked at for a number of months. There was also concern that a fan may need to be added, especially with summer coming up and Newsline and other potential activities running the repeater for extended periods of time. The Secretary showd the paperwork received from the FCC showing the trusteeship of the two club callsigns W0BZN and N0NK were both transferred from Bob Harder to Michael Harvey.

Relief Sale: Very low-key sale this year, weather was perfect, it was very smooth and quiet from an emergency standpoint. There was only one emergency where a person burned both hands in hot fat and was taken to the hospital, but that happened before Amateur operators were on duty so it was not handled by radio. There were fewer Amateur operators than normal, but fortunately the sale went very smoothly. Results from the sale are on the web site: http://kansas.mccsale.org/

Meeting adjourned 10:20am.