January 25th, 2008 - Consumer Electronics Show 2008 - A Gaze Into The Future?
Notes Posted By Sheila Clarke on January 30th, 2008
Vienna Wireless Society
Friday, January 25, 2008
Vienna Elementary School
The turkey gobbler sounded a little raspy (a cold perhaps?) as our President, Jim W4JTP, called our meeting to order at 7:35 pm.
ATTENDANCE: 48
NEW VISITORS:
Bob Spiller (No Call) and Ed Clements (No Call) were our two new visitors this week. We are pleased to announce that Bob also joined our club.
The meeting began with a moment of silence for the recent passing of long-time member, Alan Bosch KO4ALA this past week. He was an Elmer and a good friend to many of us.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
1. Dennis WA4QMS, our Vice President and Winterfest Czar, explained what Winterfest was for the new visitors, adding that Winterfest is an ARRL sanctioned event and this event is our club’s major fundraiser that helps support our other activities. Then he announced that he planned to email the team leaders and all who volunteered, with information on their duties.
Dennis also stated that he still needs help with the tailgating duties for Winterfest. Plus, he now needs someone for graphic help with printing out vendor badges.
Vie de France has been contacted and will be on location at 8:00 am Sunday with refreshments and pastries for sale.
2. Pete KG4OJT, our Treasurer, reported that our estate auction (last meeting) of our former club secretary Len KG6ZR, raised $4,600. He added that 20% of that would go to our club and the rest to Len’s family.
Pete also reported that at Winter NAQP last weekend (Camp Highroad in Middleburg, VA) we had 28 members attend. The club made 475 contacts. There was plenty of great food provided by our caterer which a member figured came out to approximately 105 calories per QSO!
The Town of Vienna has been paid for use of the Community Center meeting room in March.
Applications for park permits for Burke Lake (Field Day) and Lake Fairfax (NAQP Summer) have been sent.
And, $493.00 has been paid to cover books for Winterfest.
3. John AF4PD stated that the repeater linking wasn’t ready yet for prime time. It works, but the audible isn’t very good. The VHF repeater (Fair Oaks Hospital) and the 2m repeater in Vienna at the American Legion Club are interfaced with the repeater control. This system is working both ways. You can call the 2m repeater which will retransmit to Fair Oaks on 70m and vice versa. The link is up only for a certain time and then the controller takes it down which is a bit inconvenient. The timer resets every time it’s used, however.
There is also an annoying message that states, “Under DRU” which repeats every 10 seconds. The team is trying to figure out the source of this. So far, it’s still there. The program that allows interpreting all messages isn’t working. It’s and old DOS 1991 on a 3 ½ inch floppy.
4. Byron W4SSY announced that he was having a workshop to teach members how to build “spud guns.” A sign-up sheet was passed around for those who wanted to learn.
5. Sheila KI4WKY, our Secretary, passed around an information sheet giving pricing for 3 different restaurant possibilities for our August Banquet. She asked that members review the information and then answer the questions at the bottom asking if they’d like to keep the banquet at Wu’s Garden or if they want to have it somewhere else. If they do, would they like a luncheon banquet, dinner banquet and at what price point would they be willing to pay.
6. Tom N4ZPT our Balloon Boss, announced that volunteers have already begun building the equipment for our next VWS-6 Balloon Launch scheduled for February 9. This launch will also include school children in the Near Space Explorers group from the Algonkian Elementary School. They have a science project payload to include about seeds. The new patch for this launch has been designed and is on order also.
He also asked members for ideas for upcoming balloon launches. And, mentioned that the patch for our VWS-5 balloon launch is for sale to anyone.
A presentation about our balloon launches is being planned for a future meeting.
PRESENTATION:
Phil AI4JF gave a very informative and funny presentation on his recent trip to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. This is the largest trade show in the world. The attendance was 140,000 people viewing 2,700 exhibits in an area of 1.85 million square feet of exhibition space. This is not open to the public so we were very pleased to be able to get a peak of what this was like through Phil’s eyes and his camera’s lens.
REFRESHMENTS:
Brian WV4V provided the drinks, munchies and other goodies for this meeting. All of this was either food remaining from our Christmas party (unopened items) or donated by him and will be no cost to the club. Steve N5SK will be providing our munchies for us from now on for the rest of the year.
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