Once again our group expanded this month as we filled 12 seats. David Sawyer, our newly license member
K1DRS was there with his daughter Gabrielle and son Alexander. David, with new license in-hand, handled all our radio chatter as we drove up from the south bay in the WB1CFQ MARC-labeled van. Also there was Don Weber – KA7QQV, J.P. Rouland – NQ6T,
Ralph Burr – KG6BHP, Frank Neilson – KG6ELK, Larry McDonald – KG6EPS and Dave Raiman – KC6UMZ joined us for the first time.
Two hams on their own wings, Ralph Howard – WD6BGN and Catherine Howard – KA9MNZ joined us and the MARC ranks yesterday. They jumped right into the spirit of helping us grow our group and become part our local chapter. Welcome aboard Ralph & Catherine.
Pictures taken at yesterday’s meeting are available on our by clicking HERE.
Our rescheduled equipment checkout day is Sunday, March 18th @ 1:00 PM. Location will be at Don Weber’s office located at: 65 Hegenberger PL, Oakland, CA
94621. Hopefully our sunny weather will hold, as we will still be working outside. Purpose of this gathering is to check our radio installations to be sure they are ready for the
up-coming riding and event support season. Don will have his test equipment and facilities at our disposal. If anyone reading this has a radio installation issue or question or just wants to have a good time, this is a meeting to attend. After our equipment checks are completed we will practice some slow speed riding on the old naval air station grounds.
Talk-in frequencies will be the same 147.240 + we use for the meetings.
Our BA-MARC poster was distributed at yesterday’s meeting and was well received by everyone. I was very please with the enthusiasm our group showed by promising to get it posted in the prominent motorcycling and ham radio locations surrounding our area. David sure did a good job in making our poster look professional and inviting. Great work David!
Our major focus for the March meeting was the Tierra Bella Cycling Classic. As of yesterday, we now have signed up 10 call signs on motorcycles and 2 in SAG wagons for this event. Included in these numbers are Ray Davis – KD6FHN and De Witt Morgan KM6UK from headquarters. Lewis Osborn – K7LVO, will come
in from the wilds of Oregon to help us as well. This signup is still short of what we need, but we’ll find a way of making it work.
At this year’s Tierra Bella event we will be using remote repeaters located in the communications holes we found last year. This should make a significant difference in getting the message traffic clear and moving without a lot of relaying, which didn’t work well last year. Communications director Don Irving is in the process of creating the
events communication plan and documents and should have them to us soon.
For a product review, Don Weber brought along a demonstration headset he received for testing. Don has this headset on a helmet right now, but from his initial comments, it doesn’t look like it will be robust enough to work in a motorcycle application. Pryme sells this headset for $49 retail and when I saw it, I thought it looked weak.
MARC members visiting HRO (Ham Radio Outlet) in Sunnyvale, CA will now get a 10% discount on all purchases with one exception. This exception is on new or demonstration radios. Ken, HRO’s store manager in Sunnyvale said, “I don’t have 10% in most radios to discount, but I will give what I have available.” MARC
members wanting this discount must show their address label on a current MARC newsletter. This discount benefit can more than make up for the cost of a MARC membership each year. Be sure to keep your current newsletter handy when you go shopping.
Once we were back in the parking lot after the meeting, we also tested a GoldWing cell-phone interface with my Motorola cell phone on Don Weber’s GoldWing. Surprisingly it worked well in the parking lot and is worthy of taking it to the next step by getting it installed on my bike for an on the road test at highway speeds. I don’t think this cell
set will work well with a Nokia cell phones using the Nokia hands-free car kit. We have reports from two users who have tried it with poor results. My Motorola cell phone allows for a headset connection so there isn’t an external amplifier in the loop with the intercom’s VOX circuit. As we gain more experience with this cell-set circuit, we’ll post
the results here.
Attendance at our local meetings is large enough that we are now having trouble communicating with the group in an open restaurant and must start thinking about finding a new location with a closed meeting area. In addition, the reservations for yesterday’s meeting were lost and the restaurant was not ready for us when we arrived. All those in
attendance were asked to start thinking about an alternative location when they travel around. From a group perspective, I would like us to keep our meeting location somewhat central to where the bulk of our chapter people are coming from so that no one area is at a disadvantage. I don’t know if this is possible, but it is our current goal. Even with
that said, if we continue our growth rate, we will not be able to stay with this restaurant too much longer and might need to make a compromise on location.
Compounding our meeting location move is the fact that we just began distributing our recruiting posters with the current address location. Any changes will require us to replace the current poster. While this is an expense, it isn’t a major issue for now.
What are member thoughts on this issue?
73s,
Roger…
WB1CFQ
