At our last meeting on 16th May, some more discussion took place regarding the future of the club.

Finances have been tight lately, with the club making a net loss on many of our recent meetings. This is due to a combination of a more expensive venue, increasing costs and a slight drop in the number of members attending on a regular basis. It has been suggested that the cost per meeting be increased to £3 each, and there has also been a proposal to increase annual membership fees from October. Our Annual General Meeting is provisionally scheduled for 3rd October, and we expect to formally put these proposals to our members during the AGM.

We’re keen to have radio equipment available for use at our future meetings. To tide us over until Dave has chance to repair the Yaesu rig, Richmond School has offered to provide an ICOM IC-735 on loan. AJ has also offered the club a 2m radio, which should allow us to establish a regular presence on VHF.

Once we’ve got an antenna permanently erected, Colin is keen to do some more promotion of the club, through local media such as richmond.org and Richmondshire Today. Chris Watkins has offered to set up a YouTube channel, giving us both a promotional platform and somewhere to preserve footage of some of the club’s activities. Colin also intends to begin promoting Jamboree on the Air within the Scouts, and has suggested hosting the event up at Hudswell this year.

Finally, we’ve got a couple of presentations scheduled for the meeting calendar. A few members have expressed an interest in C4FM and HF digital modes, but aren’t really sure how best to get started. A couple of members have therefore offered to “have a go” at home, and provide some demos showing what they’ve learned. We’ve had a look at some of the more interesting capabilities of these modes in the past, but we’d like these events to be a bit simpler and more practical, in the hopes that we can get a few more people “over the hump”, and get them up and running with these modes. Dates are on the meetings page.