The April 15, 2006 meeting was held at the Food Court at the Newton Factory Outlet Mall.  The meeting was called to order at 9:11am by President Dan Inskeep.  Present were Ko Bartel, Lee Buller, Lon Buller, Aaron Diller, David Godshall, Bob Harder, Kent Harder, Mike Harvey, Dan Inskeep, Bob Ogden, and Kent Stutzman.

Minutes: The March Minutes were accepted without corrections.

Treasurer's Report: We made a partial payment of $240 to Mike Harvey for the new repeater he's preparing, for a balance of $947.87 in the checking account, $105 in petty cash, for a total of $1,052.87 in club funds.

Field Day: Last full weekend in June, which is June 24-25 this year, and we'll be joining the Hesston College Amateur Radio Club at Stutzman Retreat Center.  There was a question about seeing if we could find and borrow Ron Farthings crank-up tower and Mike Harvey might find a camper to set up a station across the lake.  There was discussion about radios, antennas, and other items that people might bring for Field Day.

HAM Radio Class: Lee Buller has hosted two good sessions so far, with about half a dozen students.

MCC Relief Sale: It was a good sale, with about 6-7 Amateur Radio operators helping with communications.

Cable channel 7: Kent Stutzman read a new spot he's going to submit for the Channel 7 local happenings channel, talking about the new "Hello" campaign and the radio club.

New Repeater Towers: The new towers are not yet up, they've run into some delays with getting permission from various agencies, including checking for Indian Burial grounds, FCC/FAA, bird migration route questions, pipe lines, core samples, etc.  Lee has a line on a full reel of 50ohm coax he might be able to get a hold of for free.  Connectors might cost around $60 apiece.

Bluetooth Adapter: Kent Harder talked about finding a bluetooth adapter for Amateur Radios to allow control from a PDA, computer, via the Internet, etc.  It's about a $60 kit.

Radio Recommendation: Kent Stutzman reported his TX-202 HT has bit the dust and he was wondering what recommendations people might have for good dual-band HTs.  Aaron showed his Kenwood 7X, and there was discussion about Icom and Yaesu radios as well.

Meeting Location: Lon read in the newspaper that the Newton Factory Outlet Mall is up for sale, so we don't know if that means we will be losing our meeting location in the near future.  Everyone should keep their eyes open for alternate meeting locations should the need arise.

QSO Party: Lee mentioned that Kansas does not currently have a QSO Party, it was last run by the Topeka club in the mid-90's.  He was wondering if our club would be interested in trying to coordinate a Kansas QSO party.  Bob described that a state QSO party has people outside the state try to work every county in the state, and the state needs to make sure there are operators in every county; this would mean having some rovers to go to multiple counties without operators.  This weekend is the Michigan QSO party, and California is one of the biggest ones.  There seemed to be some enthusiasm for pursuing this.  Kansas has 105 counties.  First step will be to decide on a date next year, based on weather, temperature, other events, and there was discussion about whether it is was better to hold the QSO Party on the same weekend as other QSO parties.

Meeting adjourned at 10:20am.