Wisconsin Association of Repeaters

Hello everyone. First of all, I hope that everyone was able to enjoy the holidays. I know it’s been a while, but as you can see we’ve made quite a bit of progress over the last few months. Thanks to my fellow board members, the Coordination Secretary committee, and our WAR Coordinator, much of the current backlog on getting repeater pairs have been at least entered into the system, and waiting for final approval. For those waiting for those repeater pairs, you should be hearing from us real soon.

Over the last six months or so, many of us have asked our members to help volunteer for some of the longer-term projects that WAR has been looking at. Some of them include:

• Becoming District Representatives for your area
• Joining the Coordination Secretary committee
• Helping the discussion on possible selective access changes for the NW region
• Modifying the current band plan to enhance current technologies, and possibly add new repeater pairs

If you are interested in learning more about any (or all) the volunteer positions available, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me or any other WAR board member. I hope to have the final volunteer list in a couple weeks, and subcommittees created by the end of January 2018.

Until next time, 73 de Dean KB7QDI

If you have not returned your periodic update, you’re going to receive a 2nd notice this week. Please don’t ignore this document, it’s a compliance requirement that you must sign and return the periodic update by December 31st, 2017. The terms by which you agreed to as a Holder of Coordination specifically requires you to maintain your relationship with WAR, and thus maintaining your coordination. We used the Primary Contact address listed for your coordination back in February. Now we’ve used the HOC and the Sponsor addresses to try and make contact. Please comply with the 2nd notice.

I wanted to give everyone an update on where we’ve been over the last 5-6 weeks.

First, WAR and the Coordination Secretary committee have been meeting via audio and web conference almost every week since August. Most of the discussion has been on learning the coordination workflow, as well as educating ourselves on the software. Recently, Dave KA9FUR has been able to allocate some time into helping us, as well as taking on some of the backlog before passing it to the committee. It’s safe to say that a lot has been accomplished, especially within the last couple weeks.

The Coordination Secretary committee hopes to have complete access to the database and paperwork over the next week or so, and from there we can assign tasks to the committee members and get back on track. As part of the process, procedures on reaching us via e-mail or postal mail has changed so that all correspondence go through the committee. For those who have submitted applications for new or updated repeater coordination, we promise that you should hear back from someone in the committee soon.

Dave also completed the second notices and passed them on to the WAR Secretary, so for those who have not completed the first notice should get your reminders in the near future.

Lastly, we have confirmed the 2018 Membership Meeting for Saturday, March 17th at Ham Radio Outlet in Milwaukee. Doors will open around 9:30 AM, with the meeting starting at 10:00 AM sharp. There will be plenty to discuss, so I hope to see you all there.

I will follow up with you again in the next couple weeks as to our progress. If you have any questions or comments, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

Until next time, 73 de Dean KB7QDI