The May 2007 Meeting of the Newton Amateur Radio Club was held in the Chisholm Trail Mall, Suite #102. In attendance were Ko Bartel, Bob harder, Lorna Harder, Mike Harvey, Dan Inskeep and Kent Stutzman.

The meeting was called to order by President Mike Harvey at 9:10.

No one had the April minutes, so there were no corrections or treasurer data available.

Old Business:
There has been no change in the repeater configuration at Camp Hawk. We are still using the original set-up Mike has set in place. Some discussion was held as to how the feed lines come in to the building, providing excellent grounding for all systems in the building.

A work day needs to be arranged to get the 446.525 repeater in the cabinet at the grain elevator. Weather and wind permitting will be the obstacles. No remote receive sites have been coordinated yet for 146.61.

Field Day: June 23-24
Bob Harder has provided the lions share of radios and antenna in previous years. He has built his station in to his house and tearing it down to provide antenna and radios is a day long event. Bob will provide at least one station, and other radios were mentioned as being available for use. The CW trailer will again run off of generator power.

IRLP is now tone encoded to keep the repeater ID from going over the network of connected computers. Each person may want to program two memory channels for 61, one with, one without the tone encode if you just want to be heard locally.

Bob mentioned the ongoing effort to provide communications in and around Greensburg. The Salvation Army remains in need of operators for canteens and relief operators are coming from Oklahoma and Colorado to assist. Due to the total devastation, many hams that went May 4-6 were turned away as there were open gas lines and the town was under curfew. See the Kansas Section news from the ARRL.

Aaron Diller, Dan Inskeep and Kent Stutzman helped the Chamber with the West Newton Spring Fling parade on May 12. The lead emergency service vehicles and all other participants in the parade were ready and sent down the street on time at 10:30.

RACES:
It is highly encouraged that if you want to help at most any emergency response that the FEMA ICS100 and ICS700 courses be taken. It is likely that ICS200 and ICS800 will be highly recommended in 2008. Bob offered to the local RACES group a session in the Computer Labs at Hesston College so those that need access to the Internet to take the courses can meet in one room and take the courses as a group. It also would allow for group discussion.

New business:
Kent will be meeting with Lon, Harvey Co EM on Tuesday for a general RACES discussion. As Lon now has a part-time secretary, he is feeling he has the time to start working on training events for the group. Stay tuned for any developments.

Mike brought up the idea that with the number of people that stay and discuss things before and after meetings, that we should consider having a monthly get together outside of the meetings just for social time. A few ideas were Braums, Subway, Charlie's and Pizz Hut for this gathering.

Mike also made mention of the fact that long coax runs down a tower and high winds can give you a highly charged static electric environment. He had coax wires run in to his shack that were indeed live with a charge. Thankfully he saw this when no radios were connected. Another good reason to have your station properly grounded.

Reminder: The June Club meeting will be held at a place to be named later. The meeting is scheduled for June 9, one week early- allowing those interested to go to the B & H Sidewalk sale in Derby June 16.

Meeting adjourned at 10:25.

Minutes taken by Kent Stutzman