MINUTES OF THE STROUD RS AGM 2004

The meeting was held at The Bear Rodborough

on 25 Nov 2004 at 2100hrs

Attendees

Steve G3ILO , Clive G6SQT , Roger G3NQF , Andrew G7PSQ , Gordon G8EMU , Doug G4VZR , Tony G1XAL , Tony Hillman and Gordon

Apologies

Reg G0OOF , Tony G0RUY 

Approval was given of the 2003 EGM , Proposed G1XAL , Seconded G7PSQ. 

Chairman's report

Gordon said another quiet year for the Club , very little done other than the regular meeting every 2 weeks , and hope for growth in membership in the future .

Treasurers Report

Bob G0NUN the Treasurer not in attendance.

A.O.B.

Phil mentioned the G4SRS Web-Site , and said he is happy to continue as "web-master" and there was unanimous support for paying the £3 a year towards it. www.g4srs.co.uk

There was widespread approval for a late Xmas meal on 6th Jan at The Bell , Tony G1XAL is going to organise the event .

Phil asked about a Junk Swap , to be organised sometime next year .

Steve mentioned the Stroud Packet Nodes and asked for a volunteer to become licence holder etc , as he is no longer able to be the licence holder , no one was willing to do the job.

Various other discussion on a club net , field day etc

Election of Officers

Gordon G8EMU has stepped down , and Tony G1XAL is the new Chairman

Steve G3ILO Sec

Phil G0TNG Web Master

Bob G0NUN Treasurer (to be confirmed)

unanimously passed by all

Tony G1XAL thanked Gordon for his chairmanship over the last few years .

Meeting Closed at 2220

Many amateurs with an interest in packet radio will already be familiar with the Stroud Node whose callsign is GB7ST-2 or STRD21.

About ten years ago now some of the members of the G4SRS Radio Club decided to construct and operate a packet radio node due to lack of network coverage in the Stroud & surrounding areas.

The node, which is located in an extremely good location on a hilltop by Stroud in Gloucestershire, has been running almost faultlessly since the day it was first switched on. The node has very good coverage into South Wales and Gloucester and almost everywhere in between!

 

The Stroud node provides both Bulletin Board (BBS) and DXCluster (DXC) access using a single command and provides all the facilities of a much larger node allowing users with low power & small antennas to access the packet network on 144.950MHz 24 hours a day
Only a few months ago, the sysops decided to investigate adding a 10M port on 29.250MHz to the Stroud node. Permission was quickly obtained and the equipment got together. A site visit was made to assess antenna location and a special rack-mounted TNC converted to 10M operation. Local amateurs and listeners kindly donated equipment and their time to the project and special thanks go to each of them.

I am pleased to say that the new Node, whose callsign is GB7ST-10 or STRD-10 is working extremely well and it is hoped that during the Summer months the good DX potential of 10M will allow the users of Strd21 to work some Packet Radio DX! The easiest way for packet users to access the new 10M node is to connect to STRD21 as normal and then once the Strd21 "Welcome" prompt has appeared, simply type C STRD-10. After a very short delay, Strd10 will announce itself and if you type MH you will see a list of callsigns the 10M node has heard

We know that many users of the Stroud Node have expressed an interest in what the Node actually looks like and so we have included some pictures showing the equipment cabinet and the internal electronic modules. There are also pictures of the antennas, a picture of the farmyard we have to cross to get to the Node site and even an "action" shop showing Steve constructing the new node!

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 The TNCs are heavily modified rack-mounting units running special node linking software and the transceivers are standard 10M/2M/70cm units but again are specially modified for continuous node operation.

In case you are wondering-----all three TNCs are linked using a diode matrix interface on their RS232 communications ports and the terminal in the top of the equipment cabinet allows visiting sysops to configure and monitor the whole node while on site