VAPO Exec/Sysop Meeting Minutes

Feb. 02, 1999

Discussion Topics as follows:

1.) Membership Renewal Notices?

Lane, ve7ihl suggested that we might want to send out membership renewal notices before people's memberships were expired. It was decided that we would send out personal packet messages 1 - 2 months before their membership expires.

2.) Vapo Membership Dues

It was decided that the VAPO membership dues for 1999 would have two price classes, $15 for BCFMCA members and $25 for non-BCFMCA members. We will also be going back to the annual system of membership dues, and will pro-rate people's dues to expire at the end of 1999. Tom, ve7did will handle this. Once we are back on the annual dues (end of the year), the workload for Tom will be much reduced.

3.) VAPO Gazette Issues

We will be going with a web-published gazette (newsletter) this year. This is being done to save on costs. (A large portion of the yearly vapo dues goes toward printing and mailing the newsletter out) This now means that each member's $25 yearly dues will be going toward the maintenance of actual packet radio equipment. There will be three ways for members to read the newsletter:

a.) Read it directly from the VAPO web site (http://www.rainbowcountry.bc.ca/vapo)

b.) Read it from the text copy that will be sent out as a series of packet bulletins

c.) Have a printed copy mailed to you. (By request only)

The newsletter will be published to the VAPO web site 2 weeks before the general meeting. At that time, Jerome ve7ass will also publish it in a series of packet bulletins as well. If any VAPO member wishes to have the printed copy mailed to them, a packet bulletin will be sent out indicating where they can send in their request to. We are not anticipating a large demand for this service.

4.) VAPO Meetings for 1999

The following VAPO meeting dates have been decided upon:

General Meetings: Executive/Sysop Meetings:

March 13th, March 2nd

June 12th, June 1st

Sept. 18th, Sept. 7th

Dec. 4th, Nov. 23rd

General meetings are on Saturdays, starting at 10:00am

Executive/Sysop Meetings will be (usually) on Tuesday evenings at 7:30pm. We may or may not have every Executive/Sysop meeting, bit the time slots will be at least have been allocated.

5.) Technical Projects/Issues

Current cash in the VAPO bank account is $1826.

We will proceed this year to purchase UPS and golf cart batteries for 2 VAPO BBS systems. Total cost is not known at this time, but we would like to limit these costs to the $500 - $600. Lane, ve7ihl will be designing a microprocessor based 12 volt battery monitoring system that will allow us to use the cheaper 'dumb' small UPS. Tom ve7did to price out the cost of new golf cart batteries.

The antenna at the 9K6 Vapo repeater site (Mt. Seymour) needs to be replaced with a better one. Tom suggested replacing the single dipole antenna, with two co-phased 6 element UHF beams. Tom will look into the cost of this. We are budgeting about $300 for this project.

The VHF antenna at the SFU site still needs to be replaced with a UHF beam. Tom ve7did, and Lee ve7cc, to coordinate this project. VAPO already has the six element UHF beam purchased for this purpose.

Tom ve7did mentioned we may have access to a good Burnaby site to put up a 9k6 repeater. We will need to look for donated equipment to do this, and approval at the site to put something like this up. Would be possibly used as a 9k6 user port repeater for a VAPO BBS system.

Minutes typed up by Lane, ve7ihl, on Feb. 04, 1999.