August 7, 2020 Update

The poll reference whether to have a meeting or not has now closed.  The question asked was:  “If we held an in-person member meeting on August 22nd, would you attend?”  Each time it was checked we were surprised to see it go back and forth between yes and no.  And that was the case all the way to the end.  The final count was:

Yes – 14

No – 13

The officers are going to discuss the result over the weekend and then announce their plan on Monday.

73’s

Steven Davoust [N5KCH]
President

T. Wayne Moore [KC5KOH]
Vice President

Phillip Beall [W5EBC]
Secretary

George Haneke [NV7Z]
Treasurer (acting)

 

August 3, 2020 Update

The Club officers recently contracted with an attorney who is also an Extra Class license holder. He has extensive experience with writing contracts between clubs and repeater site hosts. We had him draft a contract suitable for exchange with KXII station management. The draft went through multiple reviews and was modified to reflect the specific needs of RRVARC and aligns with the goal of placing our repeater gear on KXII’s tower.

On Friday, July 31st, the RRVARC officers met and finalized the details of our plan to meet with station management at KXII. Several actions were taken at that meeting and subsequently on Monday, August 3, 2020.

• The officers, reflecting that without a meeting to have the membership adopt the draft Constitution & Bylaws (C&B) and with the fact that our current C&B is poorly crafted for things such as establishing agreements with other parties, we needed to adopt some language we would abide by. To at least partly address those shortcomings we formally adopted the following positions reflected in the current C&B draft:

• No Club repeater equipment shall be placed on a host site without first securing a written agreement establishing the Club’s obligations to the site host and the host site’s obligations to the Club.
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• Any meeting conducted for the purpose of securing a contractual agreement:
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  • Shall be attended by no less than two persons representing the Club.
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  • The persons shall be at least two from the following: the president, vice president, secretary, treasurer and/or trustee.
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  • We further agreed that it is our strong preference to have no less than three Club representatives present. Recognizing some current limitations on numbers of people present based on the pandemic this may not always be possible, but it is our stated position that we strongly desire three representatives present for such meetings.
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• Only the president of the Club may bind the Club by signing an agreement.
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  • Any agreement to be signed by the Club president shall first be reviewed and approved by the vice president, secretary and treasurer. Only after approval by the other officers may the president sign the agreement and the agreement shall also be signed by at least one other officer.
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  • If the language of the agreement is substantially changed from the language our outside counsel drafted for us the officers may opt to have the language reviewed by outside legal counsel prior to voting on whether to adopt it or not.
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  • In the event an agreement is reached the language shall be distributed to the membership promptly with a layperson explanation of the details.
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• Kelly Collins (W5KJC) learned that KXII has a new chief engineer. This explains at least part of the reason Kelly has had recent difficulty in getting replies to emails and messages left with their technical representative.
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• A meeting has now been scheduled with KXII management.
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• A letter has been sent to KXII management confirming the date and time for an in person meeting with them. A copy of that letter can be viewed at the “Correspondence” button on the left.
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• We have recently had members making requests that we believe are best served by placing them onto the website. We may eventually have functions such as a member user forum, a request for assistance, a “flea market” type page, etc., but in the mean time we have put up a simple page with a button on the left which says “Member Assistance/Requests”. Please click that button and look at the two currently listed.

• Please email Phillip Beall or Kelly Collins to have your name added to the Tour de Paris list linked at the top button on the left. Shortly we will start recruiting people to help with a telephone tree to call every person who has previously participated in order to proactively seek persons to fill the spots on the sign up list. If you have not signed up but are planning to help with Tour de Paris please email Phillip or Kelly so that they do not have to call you.

• Finally, we are going to test a very primitive version of polling. We will eventually get some sophisticated tools up to find out what the Club members want to do, want us to pursue for them, etc., but for now we have a very simple matter to ask your opinion about. So far the courtroom is still not open to us to conduct a meeting. Kelly Collins has offered to allow the Club to use his church in order to conduct a meeting. There is no sense in having a meeting if nobody comes so what we want to know is if we hold a meeting somewhere – Will you come? To help inform your decision you may assume all reasonable safety measures will be in place and there will be adequate spacing to allow for social distancing. With those stated, please click this link [The link was removed at 1700 on 08/07/2020.] and answer that question. We will publish the number once the results are in. Please reply by 5PM on Friday, August 7. It is up to us to make mature and informed decisions, but we do very much value your input.

73’s

Steven Davoust [N5KCH]
President

T. Wayne Moore [KC5KOH]
Vice President

Phillip Beall [W5EBC]
Secretary

George Haneke [NV7Z]
Treasurer (acting)

 

July 30, 2020 Update

Please continue down the page for an update on the maintenance underway on the site.  But right now we wanted to point you to some very specific buttons on the left:

• Tour de Paris 2020 – Please go there, take a look at the map and drop us an email at WB5RDD@WB5RDD.ORG and let us know where we can add you to the list.
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• Field Day – Read the debrief on Field Day 2020.  If you have operating notes and/or a picture of yourself operating on FD2020 please send them to WB5RDD@WB5RDD.ORG so we can add it to the page.
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• Cellular Hot Spots – The button on the left related to cellular hot spots lists a bunch that are coming up for renewal.  If you can match yours to one of those listed, or just send us the serial number for yours, we will start trying to provide reminders and links for renewing your individual cellular hot spot.  Please drop us a note to WB5RDD@WB5RDD.ORG and we will enter your information in the Club record.
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• W4W – The Club scored a great 1×1 call sign for 2020 and we were very disappointed that Field Day 2020 for the Club did not get to include more Club members having the opportunity to use it.  Well, we have great news…  WE SCORED W4W AGAIN!  We are going to get another chance to use W4W, this time for Field Day 2021.  We have a year to get prepared, so let’s plan on making this the best Field Day the RRVARC has ever had!

Soon we will send everyone an email reference the items above, but in case anyone came by the site we wanted to go ahead and put these details up to encourage the flow of information and ask you to please help us with the information requested.  Thank you!

73’s

RRVARC Officers

In coordination with, and with the blessing of, the officers of the RRVARC, the site (WB5RDD.ORG) is in the process of being completely revamped.

1.  The first step was behind the scenes.  Look up at the address bar and see if there is a padlock, https, a check mark, etc.  These are your guarantee of the security of the site.  Why is that important?  To protect your personal information.  To safeguard the Club and all of its history.  To allow us to add PayPal.  There are many reasons.  RRVARC now has commercial grade security in place.
2. The next step was to actually organize the information on the site.  Honestly, it was a mess and that organizational process continues.  You will notice buttons being moved around on the top and left side.  Notice that some have years under them.  We are organizing things so that you can find what you are looking for.  You are encouraged to check the buttons out.  Most are incomplete, but many are fairly well developed.  The top buttons are about 80% there and the top 4-6 buttons on the left are also 80%, maybe 80%+.  They are getting content fast.

If you came to the page while these  site changes are being made please be patient.  You are welcome to poke around.  There are a lot of other plans for the site, but we had to get things all aligned.  Under one umbrella as far as all of our documents and records.  Safe and secure, easy to access and then we will move on to even better stuff.

If you like what you see, please tell us.  If you do not like what you see, please tell us.  We work for you.  Just drop us a note at WB5RDD@WB5RDD.ORG  – Phillip Beall