Meeting started at 6:30PM.  Eight members present.  We discussed past events of the Tri-State Bike Ride and some issues that had happened during the event such as someone leaving their mike stuck on which timed out the repeater and occasional events that we lost signal until we shut down and came back up.  Discussed possibilities of riders with an excessively powerful hot spot and the tracking panels that receive the chipped riders as they pass by them.  We will do some experimenting and discovery during the next ride to see what affects our units in a negative way.  We also discussed testing simplex during the next ride.

We discussed the Simulated Emergency Test from last October.  The results are finally out and Alabama came in first in the nation and our club came in 4th in the state.  Great job W4DHN ARES group!!  We will be sending out letters with the results of last years SET to all the Emergency Personnel that we made contact with to complete our tasks during the set to thank them for helping us do well and asking for their help again in the SET this upcoming October.

Discussion of the upcoming field day and this year’s SET occurred.

A suggestion of another POTA camping trip was made and a consensus occurred.  We will start looking for another venue for our outing.

We discussed Tic Tac Tile.  Rick came up with the suggestion of two players starting on a designated ‘board’ which would be 9 tiles and the first one to make contact in a tile “blocks” the rest from that tile.  Whoever gets 3 vertically, horizontally or diagonally first would be the winner.  We will revisit this idea.

Alan and Barbara’s vacation will be from June 18th until July 13th.  The July ARES meeting is cancelled.

Alan then gave a presentation on the Raspberry Pi Health & Welfare RMail program designed by WF5W using the Pi as a hot spot and allowing those with cell phones to connect and type in their email to whoever they chose for their health & welfare notification.  The administrator would then only need to review the messages to make sure they meet Amateur Radio qualifications and then send them via winlink or changing to a location with internet.  A great deduction of time and energy instead of handwriting Radiograms and then calling them over the air.

We discussed the winch for the equipment trailer.  It had a crack in the spindle and had been disassembled.  Jimmy cancelled the workday on Saturday because we had not gotten approval to spend the funds on a new winch.  Barbara texted Doug and got the procedures.  Jimmy found prices and information from Harbor Freight on winches.  Problem solved by Friday afternoon.

The meeting adjourned.  Alan and Clinton worked on the WinLink on the club computer to no avail.  Al will need to be brought in.

BLC