Once again this month’s meeting was conducted online via Zoom. We had a great turnout with at least 30 people participating (more about that later) and a great program put on by club president Mike Shreve, N6MRS and Matt Stevens, NJ4Y.

The meeting was called to order at 1900 with Mike leading us in the Pledge of Allegiance, followed by a couple of announcements:

Pursuant to last Monday night’s board meeting, Jimmy Russ, AB4KA was introduced as the new Public Information Officer for LARC. Jimmy will be taking care of the club’s blog and Facebook pages, as well as general dissemination of information as required to the club, other hams and the public, as well as “other related duties as required”. He will also be an honorary (non-voting) board member.

It was also announced that, as LARC is currently without a Secretary, Matthew Stevens, NJ4Y will take on the position of Acting Secretary until the next election for club officers. Kudos to Matthew for taking that ball and running with it!

Once introductions were completed, Matthew Stevens, NJ4Y conducted a wonderful presentation on his portable VHF & UHF operations during recent contests. He had lots of great photos of his contest setups at remote locations, which I’m sure will encourage others to get out and get portable. Great job, Matt!

After that, Mike Shreve, N6MRS gave us an extremely informative discussion on different ham radio websites. Some of the sites he discussed were:

www.qrz.com the quintessential ham radio website
www.voacap.com HF Propagation prediction website
dxsummit.fi online spotting website
reversebeacon.net online spotting website (great for checking your own signal)
spaceweatherwoman.com THE place to go for solar forecast information
blitzortung.org Fascinating website showing real-time lightning strike info worldwide

(one note to add…please look up your own information on qrz.com and make sure it is accurate!)

Big thanks to Matt and Mike for an excellent program!

At this time we’re not sure when or where our next “in person” meeting will be, so be on the lookout for news here on the blog. As always, make sure you’re “in the know” by visiting our blog at blog.lakelandarc.org and the website at lakelandarc.org as well as the club Facebook pages (it’s my understanding that business on the FB pages is picking up!)

So back to tonight’s attendance, please accept this humble apology from your new PIO if he missed your callsign, your last name or the fact that you were there at all. Keeping attendance of online meetings can be a challenge and he promises to do better next time! But such as it is, here is a list of dubious accuracy of tonights attendees:
N6MRS Mike Shreve (club president)
NJ4Y Matthew Stevens (acting secretary)
W7STR Todd Rush (club treasurer)
AB4KA Jimmy Russ (public information officer)
KT2T Mike Oliver
WB6ZEQ Top Smith
KO4AWJ Glenn Smith (Li’l Top)
N4HES Lee Hess
KB0QMN George Rezac
KM4BAO Bob Doherty
NC8I Bob Berquist
WA4MMO Geoff Schuck
K4KJN Christine Duez
KN4PIH Jay Lennon
KC1JYS Dan Haslam
KO4FXP Howard Pierce
N4FRK Victor Saxe
KO4MA Drew Glasbrenner
K4YQ Steve Sexton
KM4STS Liam Holzer
N4ESS Rich Kennedy
KI4WRZ Dave Zdanowicz
W4XDS Jim Stewart
Buddy Morgan
Bill Johnson
Andrew Stevens
David Perrin
Eric Clark
Judy
Joseph

73 to all and see you on the airwaves! Jimmy Russ AB4KA