We had at 9 members in the fire house, plus at least 3 more joining in via Zoom.
Here’s a link to the entire meeting on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bPBXn5xaG0
Here’s a link to the meeting agenda: https://miro.cmivolunteers.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/MIRO-General-Meeting-2022-11-17.pptx
The big news is that Woody Howse, K7EDH, has agreed to once again become MIRO Chair effective January 1, 2023. Woody will be directly reporting to our City’s Emergency Manager, MIPD Officer Jennifer Franklin.
We talked briefly about the upcoming Puget Sound Repeater Roundup on November 19 and 20. All MIRO member are welcome to participate, but if you do participate, please do log your contacts, as this is a contest and your QSO partner needs your log for the contact to score.
We talked about the upcoming Firehouse Munch on December 2nd. MIRO will be serving beverages to complement the Fire Department’s Chili. We’ll also have a table where we’ll be engaging the public, talking about Emergency Preparedness, CERT, MYN and of course, MIRO. We decided not to have a “radio to Santa” at the table.
Pat discussed plans for upcoming Tech and General license training classes and exams to be held in January and February. See the December newsletter for more details.
Bob gave a presentation on an Introduction to Winlink.
- here’s the short video that Bob showed before his presentation: https://youtu.be/9WcofnsZ06s
- here’s a link to a Winlink Contacts file that you can import: https://miro.cmivolunteers.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/KM6SO-MIRO-Contacts-2022-11-18-12-11-52.txt
After the presentation, Woody pointed out that you should include “//WL2K” in the subject line of an outgoing message to a third-party (not on the Winlink system) to insure that their reply back to you will pass through the Winlink “white list”. Bob comments that whenever you send a message to a third-party, that address automatically gets placed on your “white list”. And here’s what the Winlink folks themselves say about the matter. In other words:
- you can always send out to a non-Winlink email address
- non-Winlink addresses that receive an email from your Winlink address can directly reply back to you, since they are automatically added to your whitelist.
- non-Winlink addresses that have never received a Winlink message from you must include //WL2K in their subject
After viewing the video of the meeting, Mark, N7MMO made the the following comments
I use a Digirig interface with my Yaesu VX-6R HT, a 100% analog radio, 5w max, and Digirig’s VX-6R cable. With my 25 dollar N9TAX rollup Slim Jim antenna, outside (which is important), I can often exchange WINLINK messages via W7MIR-10/11 from Lofall (CN87qt). The Digirig plugs into my MS Surface Go tablet running Winlink and VaraFM. I know I can do it all with my IC-7000, 50w, and the TBJ-1 on the chimney, but doing it with the HT is fun and maybe useful when the chimney falls. It was fairly straightfoward to set up.
Mark is right about the DigiRig — I’ve got one and it provided both “sound card” as well as rig control functionality in a tiny but rugged package. Mark provided the following links for the DigiRig and N9TAX antenna:
https://digirig.net/ https://n9taxlabs.com/shop/ols/products/dual-band-2m-70cm-standard-antenna