VECTOR November 2021 News

Posted in newsletter

Previous newsletters can be found in the archive.

Our next members' meeting will be held THURSDAY, November 4, online using Zoom: with Kris H sharing a current outlook from Vancouver Emergency Management Agency.

1. Coming Meeting | 2. News | 3. Learn | 4. On Air | 5. Notable | 6. Secondaries | 7. Meetings

1. Coming Meeting

Details attached to mailed version.

  1. Guest: Kris Hayne, VEMA - 20 minutes, with 10 minutes for questions

  2. Practical Exercise: Winlink

  3. O&I Forum - All, 40 minutes (flexible)

    • Coming AGM
    • Inviting New Directors
    • On-air Exercises
    • Logistics Work
    • Partnerships

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2. Community News - What’s Coming

  • Parks Events reserving site for 2022 Field Day
  • 2 On-air Exercises in November
  • AGM and In-Person Activities
  • Dave VE7CNV Memorial - 2021-11-06
  • What do you need so you can find meaningful volunteering in VECTOR?
  • Richmond Swap Meet 2021-11-27 in Steveston
  • Whom would you recommend for director?
  • VECTOR using Loomio to coordinate together
  • COVID-19 Update
  • How do you want to help? (opportunities)

Parks Events reserving site for 2022 Field Day

  • To allow us a chance to use the Queen Elizabeth Park location in 2022, we have confirmed our interest in potential in-person Field Day
  • Parks invited all community events organizers to confirm interest in using park facilities in 2022 at each group’s 2018 locations

Let me help

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2 On-air Exercises in November

  • 2021-11-13, 10:00, 4 hours overall - details: 2 m QSO Party
  • 2021-11-25, 09:30, 2.5 hours overall - details on the Drive meeting folder as Coast to Coast 10.pdf (link in mailed edition, above)
  • Refer to Upcoming On Air below

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AGM and In-Person Activities

  • 95% likely to hold Annual General Meeting on Zoom
  • Rationale and hypothesis: spring is a better time for in-person based on current conditions
  • Additional hypothesis: only volunteering in small teams to get stuff done has low enough risk, if all volunteers respect the golden rules (wear mask indoors, respect space, wash hands, carry BC Vaccine Cards, etc.)

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Dave VE7CNV Memorial

Obituary | KPU Bursary

  • Expect to see a Zoom link closer to the memorial
  • To attend the memorial in the Willow Garden at Heritage Gardens, email Kishore
  • Attendees are welcome to leave flowers at the interment for Dave’s ashes
  • Kishore updated the list of pledges, donations, and attendees. View
  • In-person attendance 14 so far, limited to 30 (COVID-19 dependent)
  • Collected pledges cover memorial costs
  • Read Dave’s Obituary
  • KPU Bursary created: Friends of Dave Koyanagi Memorial Bursary - pick amount first, search for named fund next
  • Bursary will help students based on their volunteer efforts and financial need

For more information, email [email protected], or through Facebook Group “Happy memories of Dave Koyanagi”.

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What do you need so you can find meaningful volunteering in VECTOR?

  • I notice that many of VECTOR’s work and projects remain incomplete
  • Our leading hypothesis is that you remain unaware how you can help
  • You can still add your ideas to improve how we enable you in our survey

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Richmond Swap Meet 2021-11-27 in Steveston

  • RARC planning a swap meet at South Arm United Church for the last Saturday morning in November
  • Depends on COVID-19 situation and will involve all public health requirements
  • Icom and Fleetwood plan to attend
  • Admission $5, Vendor table $20
  • Details on RARC website

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Members Meetings on Thursday nights, including AGM

For November and December, VECTOR meetings will happen on the first Thursday of the month.

During the August session, attending members asked to make it so the weekly net and monthly meeting were in different time boxes. Thursdays appear best based on the survey from the last 2 months.

We will review at the AGM, how Thursdays have worked.

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Whom would you recommend for director?

  • Send your recommendation to Jesse'
  • Directors look out for VECTOR: exercising wise judgement, navigating risk, serving as ambassadors, and identifying funding sources
  • Wise perspective is more valuable in directors than technology-specific knowledge
  • Members deliver VECTOR services (to each other and the community)
  • Next year, we seek to include team leads for tactical insights occasionally at board meetings
  • VECTOR holds Directors and Officers Liability Insurance to protect you
  • Follow-up details about being a director

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VECTOR using Loomio to coordinate together

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VECTOR COVID-19 Update - BC Vaccine Card for events

Response - November 1 | Restart | Golden Rules

  • Restrictions Updated - October 29
  • VECTOR will only organize large in-person activities based on collective member comfort levels – any director will accept your concerns and raise them as appropriate
  • VEMA still working out procedural details for how we verify that we are fully vaccinated
  • Community centres serve as example for how to behave at all city sites: wear masks indoors, carry a BC Vaccine Card

Use Jitsi for pop-up meetings when you need to share screens

Thank you for being a protector for people in our communities who could suffer from the impacts of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Dr. Bonnie Henry, BC Provincial Health Officer:

“Be kind, be calm, and be safe.”

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How do you want to help?

Give as much commitment as fits your life as a helper to finish jobs

Get advice | Help a team | Get the code

Please respond to the 2021 survey so we can make finding cool, meaningful volunteer work easier for you. Respond now

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3. Upcoming Training & Practice Opportunities

Review Learning Program | Dive into Exercises

Radio Skills | Tech Nights | Net Control

ON HOLD: Level-up - Radio Skills Course

Register now

  • Coming up in early 2022
  • Presenters needed. SSTV, APRS, digital voice, high-speed data, satellites
  • Details in October meeting summary
  • Online examinations still progressing over coming weeks for students from Basic Proficiency Course

ON HOLD: Level-up - Tech Night and Troubleshooting

Session Overview | Add to Calendar

  • Will resume based on member interest
  • Help each other solve someone’s latest communications problem
  • Come together monthly?
  • Get help with a problem that frustrates you

Level-up - become a Net Control Operator

  • Write an email to Andrew VA7YAA to join the list
  • First step: attend the introduction to the net control operator program on Zoom

Find more

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4. On Air Radio Activities

Local Nets | Program | Calendar | Jessé VE7DET | Team Page | Team Mail

2 m QSO Party - new date: 2021-11-13

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Coast to Coast 2022 - 2021-11-25, 09:30, 2.5 hours

  • Net Control: VE7PQD
  • Starting point: VE7KU Repeater, 147.240 MHz, T141.3 Hz
  • 8 on-air activities involved; rotate around on VHF, UHF, HF, and packet radio (list in file Coast to Coast 10.pdf in the folder on Drive for this meeting)

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Connect Casually Any Night - 19:05 nightly on VE7RVF

Time Estimate: 30 minutes

  • Members have run these nets for over 520 nights (since 2020-04-01) (except for 2021-07-25 when there was no net controller available)
  • Please take your shot leading as net controller for one night
  • Nightly Net Controller chooses a question or topic to inspire sharing (anything from radio to food to entertainment to no topic at all)
  • Connect to around 15 fellow operators (from 8 to 35 people any day)
  • Remember to identify your signal

Email Christin VA7WIE

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New VECTOR Winlink Gateway active - 441.025 MHz simplex

Time Estimate: 15 minutes

Tune your radio to 441.025 MHz and run your Winlink session to become more comfortable using Winlink email over radio. Finicky 440 reception means repositioning your antenna by as little as 10 cm can make a difference. If you still can’t connect, you can relay through various other Winlink nodes.

  • Added new Lenovo M90n after rack server hard drive packed it in

  • New Lenovo M90n running RMS, BPQ, and APRS-IS

  • VA7EOC-10, 441.025 MHz simplex

  • VA7EOC-1 active for APRS-IS

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Keep Formal Net Skills Sharp on Weekly Net - 20:00 weekly on Wednesdays, VE7TEL

Time Estimate: 30 minutes

Checking in on Wednesdays stretches a few less-used skills. Details below in 6. Weekly Nets.

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5. Announcements, Notables, etc.

Tier 1 (Goto) Centres have T440S computers - Tecra S-1’s and T61’s rotated out

  • Lenovo T440s notebooks rotated into the 5 Olympic Kits at Tier 1 community centres over 2 weekends in October
  • Recreation supervisors and friendly site staff helped us make all 5 cached kits ready for email over radio
  • Next: the 2 unassigned kits at the radio room, the 6 DSAs, and a few obscure sites
  • Hassan VA7HCS, Lis VA7EVJ, and Tamara VA7ETR worked with Jesse VE7DET to complete the swap
  • Russell VE7MTU made this possible with refurbished computers in 2019 and Harondel VA7MCZ assembled the disk image with our software licences from TechSoup

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Volunteers in public service must be fully vaccinated for COVID-19

  • VEMA still working out details for how we verify that we are fully vaccinated by 2021-12-06 (32 days after the members meeting this week)
  • COVID-19 vaccination as important to the City as Police Information Checks

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RAC Conference Videos Available (Youtube)

Find links to the Youtube videos and one PDF document covering all the presentations on the RAC website.

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Get to know other members on air

Nightly Check in and Chat | Monthly Exercises

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6. Weekly Net

Catch the weekly net at 20:00 every Wednesday on the VE7TEL repeater: VECTOR channel 2, 145.170 MHz -600 kHz.

Each week, a secondary net follows on a different frequency, providing opportunities for amateur radio operators to test radios using other bands and modes of operation.

Schedule for upcoming secondary net frequencies:
Date Channel Frequency Information
November 03 44 146.430 MHz
November 10 20 147.200 MHz +600 kHz T100.0 Hz
November 17 7 147.450 MHz T100.0 Hz simplex
November 24 4 146.580 MHz simplex
December 01 1 145.450 MHz -600 kHz T100.0 Hz

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7. Monthly Members' Meetings

VECTOR gathers on the first Thursday of the next 2 months to keep its operations flowing. Connect in our Zoom virtual space unless otherwise noted.

The next 4 Monthly Members' Meeting dates:
  • November 04 at 18:30 - Guest: Kris H - VEMA
  • December 02 at 18:30 - Annual General Meeting
  • January - first week, confirming day at AGM

Connect with others before and after the main session:

  • Join early (15 minutes) at 18:15
  • Hang around after (20 minutes) until roughly 20:50
  • We’ll have breakout areas available

Please find the link to the Zoom online conference room in your email edition of the newsletter for joining remotely or on your BetterImpact homepage. You can sign up for upcoming members' meetings in BetterImpact to log your meeting time automatically.

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Tnx es 73,

VE7DET || Jessé Neri, President (he|him)
[email protected]

VA7DPO || Darryl Pogue, Director (he|him)

https://vectorradio.ca/members/discuss/
https://loomio.org/vector-vancouver/ https://keybase.io/team/helpingvector
Traditional and unceded territories of the Musqueam (xʷməθkʷəy̓əm), Squamish (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh), and Tsleil-Waututh (səl̓ilwətaɁɬ) peoples.