Minutes of the SCRRBA Annual General Meeting
Saturday October 20, 2001
On Saturday, October 20, 2001 there was a Southern California Repeater and
Remote Base Association (SCRRBA) general meeting held at Harvey Mudd College in
Claremont.
Chairman Joe Saddler, WA6PAZ, called the meeting to order at 9:37AM and welcomed
everyone.
Treasurer's Report - Bill Kelsey, W6QC (for Mike Penrose, W6AP)
The treasurer, Mike Penrose, was unable to attend today's meeting. In
his absense, Bill Kelsey presented a brief report submitted by Mike on the
treasury status and showed a viewgraph of the financial statement. The
treasury is in good shape. The largest expenses continue to be annual
insurance, newsletter copies, and postage for mailing them.
10 Meter and 6 Meter Band Report - Joe Saddler, WA6PAZ (for Gary Gray, W6DOE)
The 10m and 6m coordinator, Gary Gray, was unable to attend today's
meeting. In his absense, Joe Saddler presented a brief report submitted by
Gary.
There are four pairs available on the 10m band. Currently, there are
four coordinations that have been issued. During a test that Gary
performed earlier this month, only one of the four repeaters was found.
On the 6m band, there are 56 full and test coordinations that have been
issued. From a location of about 1000' in Orange County earlier this
month, Gary was able to confirm that 22 of these were active and that one system
was
active on the test pair.
420 - 440 MHz Band Report - Robin Critchell, WA6CDR
There are roughly 75 pairs waiting for action in this band segment.
With some luck, work can begin on handling these actions in the next six
months. A new person will be handling the 420-440MHz band segment
soon. In the meantime, some training will take place before that activity
begins.
Coordinating activity in this band is technically more difficult than
440-450MHz. There are numerous restrictions that make it difficult to link
sites together in this band. Some hilltops cannot link directly to other
hilltops because of long established polarities and require a ground-hop to
reverse frequency polarities to complete the link.
Typically, coordination activity in this band is less political than
440-450MHz.
There are a number of un-used channels in this band that need to be reclaimed
and an extensive survey of the band needs to take place. It is expected
that there are enough channels available to handle the current stack of
paperwork.
440 - 450 MHz Band Report - Robin Critchell, WA6CDR
The transition to 20kHz is complete.
There are a few stray radios that haven't moved yet but they are mostly
inactive. Typically, when contacted, the coordinees willingly move their
radios to the new frequency.
Some systems (very few) have consumed quite a bit of SCRRBAs time - even
generating hundreds of email messages.
It is very important that coordinees communicate with SCRRBA so we
know what you are doing. The 20kHz@scrrba.org
email address is still the best way to communicate with us in a timely
manner. If you plan to change anything related to your coordination, or
even take your repeater off the air for a little while, you need to let SCRRBA
know.
There are about 640 or 650 coordinations in this band. Some of old
stuff has managed to fade away.
There are about 58 open repeaters on 21 open channels. It's difficult
for anyone to claim that Southern California 440-450MHz is lacking in open
repeaters. The SCRRBA website will maintain an active list of open
repeaters. The most recent ARRL Repeater Directory lists Southern
California open repeaters at the top of the list. This was done so that
the casual visitor to the area could quickly find an open repeater to use.
Co-channeling repeaters can be difficult. Radios perform quite well
these days. There are several radios on various building tops in the El
Segundo area that act like they are on 3000' mountains.
900 MHz Band Report - Dave DeGregorio, WA6UZS
Dave asked for a show of hands from those who have existing 900MHz radios on
the air or have future plans to use 900MHz. There were about a half dozen
hands raised.
Currently, there are 25 coordinations on record. Dave hasn't recently
run a survey of the band to verify how many of these systems are currently
active.
One of the biggest problems with using the band are the non-amateur services
that have primary useage.
1200 MHz Band Report - Tom O'Hara, W6ORG
There are currently 157 voice repeater coordinations on the band, 38 of which
are open repeaters.
There may have been a migration from 1200MHz back to 440MHz when the 20kHz
band plan opened up additional channels. In the last few years, there
haven't been many new applications. In addition, those systems that have
disappeared haven't notified SCRRBA so, at the moment, its unclear if they are
temporarily or permanently gone.
It is estimated that as many as half of the 157 coordinations may not exist
after contacting the coordinees for status. On a recent survey, only 10 of
38 repeaters between 1283.025MHz and 1283.975MHz were operational.
There are approximately 100 link channels coordinated. A survey hasn't
been performed in some time.
"CMRA" is the largest system on the band. Their President,
Mike Wulfstiegg (N6RHZ) passed away several months ago. Mike had a
considerable amount of knowledge about this system in his head. SCRRBA has
never really had a complete block diagram of their system but their new
President, Hugh Headlee (N6SAY) has recently provided one and the system
paperwork is being updated.
SCRRBA really needs a block diagram from every system. You know your
system better than anyone. When you contact SCRRBA, we like to look at
your block diagram to quickly familiarize ourselves with your system so we can
minimize the amount of time needed to come up to speed when dealing with
coordination matters.
It takes about 30 minutes to do all the paperwork for a coordination.
When we get free time to work on coordination issues, we're likely to work on
the one that has provided all the required paperwork. Please send all the
paperwork that is requested when filing for coordination.
The big three amateur radio equipment manufacturers don't support this band
very well. Most repeaters are being constructed from back-to-back mobiles.
E-Mail has worked very well. For any 1200MHz coordination issues you
can use the 1200@scrrba.org email address.
Amateur Television (ATV) Report - Tom O'Hara, W6ORG
There are 11 ATV repeaters in operation, most of which have outputs in the
1200MHz band. Some have outputs in the 900MHz band and even a few in the
3400MHz band.
Mike (WA6STV), and the ATN (Amateur Television Network) group, were a major
factor in fighting the attempted takeover of the 2.4GHz band by the Los Angeles
Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, last year, by
demonstrating amateur use of the bands with six of the repeaters having 2.4GHz
inputs, and links, on the air.
Amateurs are still being subjected to interference from Part 15
devices. Most of the interference is likely due to people using amplifiers
and large antennas.
ATV has been used a lot for public service events.
Microwave Band Report - Bill Kelsey, W6QC
ATV is the biggest user of the band on a full time basis. Most of the
problems in these bands are related to non-amateur use.
There are two contests each year that make use of the 2.4, 3, and 10GHz
bands.
There are occasional point-to-point links that come and go.
With the advent of PCS, there is an increasing demand for more
bandwidth. As such, the ARRL has seen more necessity to defend this
spectrum -- 2.4GHz most recently.
FCC Report - Bill Kelsey, W6QC
There are a number of people interested in microwave frequencies and they're
looking at our bands Spectrum is wealth for the FCC and auctioning off
spectrum is something they have been directed to do by Congress.
Enforcement of the Part 97 rules by the FCC has been very welcome.
There's been quite a bit of enforcement action in regards to repeater operations
- most notably in California.
If an adequate amount of documentation is sent to Riley Hollingsworth, he
does tend to deal with it and generate letters inquiring about the issue presented
to him.
NFCC Report - Bill Kelsey, W6QC
The NFCC is the National Frequency Coordinators Council. They still
exist, but its been rather disappointing that not much has been happening with
the organization.
Much of the discussions that take place on their reflector isn't very
productive and is generally a re-hash of old discussions on topics such as PL
that really shouldn't matter at the NFCC level.
The new president, Owen Wormser (K6LEW), is a good selection. He's a
resident of Washington, D.C. and is a registered lobbiest.
ARRL Report - Fried Heyn, WA6WZO
Fried was unable to attend today's meeting and no ARRL report was given.
20kHz Report - Robin Critchell, WA6CDR
The transition to 20kHz is complete. SCRRBA has been astounded at the
level of cooperation in this effort. Everyone pitched in and "just
did it". A very few number of people needed a small nudge and
cooperated right away when they were contacted and asked if they were planning
to move to the frequency.
SCRRBA has been able to issue about 20 new wide-area coordinations. In
the past, only one new wide-area coordination was issued roughly every five
years.
Robin and Gerry spent a few hours over three days in the last week
doing a brief survey of the band. They noticed that approximately
10% of the transmitters were more than 1kHz off frequency. The 20kHz
band plan requires better stability with the reduced guard band. A
few transmitters were found to be more than 3kHz off frequency. Some
of the coordinees were notified by email.
SCRRBA is not responsible for checking the stability of coordinees
transmitters. The coordinee is responsible for operating within the
parameters of their coordination. If you want SCRRBA to make a quick
check of your transmitter frequency then send us an email message.
We won't guarantee that we will respond to 100% of the requests, but if
the test equipment is available at the right time then we might be able to
check your transmitter frequency.
SCRRBA will continue to use the 20kHz@scrrba.org
email address to communicate with coordinees since it has become widely known.
Web Site & E-Mail Update - Gerry Walsh, KB6OOC
After a few months of work, the new SCRRBA website went active around the
middle of September (the same day the newsletters were mailed out). New
tools have been used to give the site a much more polished look than it
previously had with the "brute force" HTML that was behind it.
The main page has several email addresses that can be used to contact SCRRBA
for issues dealing with specific bands or administrative issues.
There are links to a "What's New?" page that will be kept current
whenever new pages are added to the website.
A listing of 440MHz open repeaters is on the website and will be kept current
as things change.
If you want to receive future newsletters and meeting announcements by email
instead of on hard copy, please let us know by sending us email at our admin@scrrba.org
address.
Maintaining A Coordination - Robin Critchell, WA6CDR
None of the information provided by Robin is new. It can all be found
on the SCRRBA website. Most of the information regarding coordination
parameters are contained in the email coordinations being sent out to people
changing frequencies (at SCRRBA's request) or those receiving first-time
coordinations.
If your repeater goes off the air the clock starts as soon as SCRRBA notices,
or earlier if can determine when it went off.
If your repeater does not appear to have a functional input receiver, its not
considered a real radio and could be subject to a summary termination.
Recently, site rental fees have been on the rise. A few coordinees have
had to remove their radios from the site because the new rental fee was too
difficult to pay. If this happens to you, please inform SCRRBA (by email
or regular mail) the day you take your radio off the site. If you leave
your radio running in your garage for six months - the coordination will be
lost.
If you inform SCRRBA that you have removed your radio from a site, the six
month clock begins. If you don't inform SCRRBA, and we find out that
you radio is not at its coordinated location anymore, a thirty day clock
begins. If you keep SCRRBA informed and provide good reasons why your
radio is not at its coordinated location then the clock can be extended in
increments up to three months. Not being able to pay site fees is not a
sufficient reason!
There have been a few coordinees that have learned these policies the hard
way and have lost their coordination. First time coordinees have almost
immediately been issued the frequency when this happens.
System owners need to be invisible to site owners. People shouldn't be
calling site owners and complaining about intermod problems, etc. Its okay
to call the site owner if its something that he would want to know
about. Complaining about things is the fastest way to get an owner upset
about all amateur radio operators and have all of us thrown out of an entire
site for a very long time. Pay your bills on time!
Current email coordination documents state the parameters of a coordination -
frequency, PL, location, power level, antenna gain, antenna height, etc.
Any changes to these parameters need to be approved by SCRRBA. Operating
outside the parameters is cause for revocation of your coordination.
Documents discussing transfer of coordination can be found on the SCRRBA
website.
At the next meeting, the documents related to maintaining and/or changing
your coordination will be updated and presented for review.
The most important thing is for coordinees to keep communicating with SCRRBA.
With good communication, clocks are not likely to run out un-expectedly.
Nominations
President Joe Saddler opened the floor for nominations of new
officers. David Corsiglia made a motion to carry the same officers
over to the next year. The motion was seconded and their was no
further discussion on the motion. After a show of hands, the motion
was approved and the current officers will continue until next year.
Old Business
There was no old business to discuss.
New Business
In addition to today's SCRRBA General Meeting, the 220MHz Spectrum
Management Association (220SMA) was having its quarterly meeting at
another location in Anaheim. There are a few members of both
organizations that wish to attend both meetings but if the two meetings
occur on the same day each year, its not possible to be at the two
meetings.
In order to avoid future conflicts, it was suggested that we might want
to have the SCRRBA and 220SMA meetings at the same location on the same
day. The 220SMA meetings four times each year at rotating
locations. They are willing to move their Anaheim meeting to our
location at Harvey Mudd College.
One group would have the auditorium first and the other group would use
it after the first meeting is complete. The group that goes first
would alternate on an annual basis.
It was moved and seconded to, "Establish a permanent annual SCRRBA
meeting on the 3rd Saturday of October at Harvey Mudd College and to
combine the effort with the 220SMA with each group alternating annually as
to which meeting starts first."
There was no opposition to the motion. The motion was approved.
SCRRBA will discuss the details with the 220SMA.
The Chairman, Joe Saddler, adjourned the meeting at approximately 12:09 hours.
