The April 19, 2008 meeting was held at the Newton Public Library. Meeting was called to order at 9:10 by President Dan Inskeep. In attendance were Bob Harder, Kent Harder, Dan Inskeep and Kent Stutzman.

Minutes were read and accepted with a correction. Bob made 1515 contacts during the Oklahome QSO party, not 150 as written.

No Treasurer's Report was available.

Old Business: MCC Sale was well attended, but hams were noticably absent. Friday had Dan Inskeep, David Godshall and David Duerksen. On hand Saturday were David Godshall, David Duerksen and Kent Harder. No major or even minor incidents reported. This was the first year that Bob Harder had not been to the sale in recent memory. The role of hams has been to set up in first aid, provide communications for people locked out of their cars, lost children and traffic control.

The questionairre sent out to decide a new time for meetings was discussed. Without a good representation, theose in attendance will see whether we will continue to meet at the Library on Saturday. Most people favored a Tuesday meeting in the EOC. The EOC is not useable unless a county staff emplyee is present at the meeting. Wednesday evenings was 2nd as was any meeting location available. Concensus is that a meeting during the week would suit most people better.

New Business: Randy Wing from the Boeing Employees Amateur Radio Service invited the Club to join the BEARS Wichita ARC at the Boeing Lake or activity center. The Newton Club appreciated the offer, but will remain as planned using the site presently reserved; Stutzman's Retreat Center of Hesston College.

Bob Harder, WØBH and Robert Kresky, ABØS will be working 24 hours in the Nebraska QSO party April 27 and 28. Also the same day is the Florida QSO party. Bob mentioned 20m was open during the Oklahoma QSO party.

Solar Activity: The sun has again turned a polarized sunspot towards earth, already increasing some activities on the higher bands. This sunspot was noted on April 17, 2008.

Sherry Weir and Chance Hayes mentioned that the ""Storm Fury on the Plains" presentation was in the books. Skywarn was represented at 16 of the 34 presentations. Total attendance for the season was in excess of 2700 . The Skywarn group has grown from 40 members in July 2007 to over 120 as of March 2008.

Dan mentioned that the last few issues of QST contained excellent articles on grounding your station. As an ARRL member if you would like to see their issue.

Kent and Dan went to EOC in the last few weeks. We discussed our capabilities and functions with 911 Director Courtney Becker, who has also questioned any training classes or a way to get a license. It is great to see more public service personnel in ham radio.

Kent mentioned that if you did not listen to ARNewsline, that they have gotten word of an IRC channel dedicated to CW. The plug-in is for the X-Chat IRC client, native to Linux distibutions and also available for Windows. There is no decoding of the CW, but the channel can handle many CW signals simultaneously.

Congress takes the FCC to task as to why the D Block for Emergency interoperability drew no bids in the recent frequency auction. With a minimum bid for the block at $1.33billion dollars and lack of return on investment, the answer should be clear during a economic downturn. This leaves ham radio firmly in place as to when all else fails, hams will be there.

Meeting adjourned at 10:20am

-- Kent Stutzman / Vice President