G0EWH (Richard) Treasurer G8PZT (Paula) Secretary, Sysop GB7PZT G0LGS (Stewart) Committee member, Sysop GB7LGS G8UAE (John) Auditor
Apologies were received from Steve G4FPV, Glynis 2E0OAC, Max G0WFK, Phil G4SPZ, and G8OTD
Last year's minutes were accepted as a true record.
The chairman was not present, so his report was delivered by the treasurer.
Due to heating work at the site, the equipment for MLVN had been temporarily relocated. The 70cm port was off, but the 2m port and 23cm ports were still working.
The WOSTER node had now been closed and the equipment removed. The rack and power arrangements had been left in situ for the community radio station which now shared the site.
There had been no visits to the CLEE or ABDON nodes. The link between ABDON and KIDDER was not working, and the link with GLOS was intermittent. We should consider closing down ABDON.
Stewart G0LGS reported that GRG planned to close the GLOS node in March 2009.
There had been no meetings since the last AGM, and no enquiries about Fourpak. A few members had renewed via the Treasurer.
The Fourpak website had been reinstated after the dispute about copyright images.
Fourpak had not hosted a packet conference for the last 2 years. The 2007 and 2008 conferences had been organised by Maxpak.
For the 4th year running, the Club's finances had suffered a deficit, this year amounting to £43.19. This was due to a decline in subscriptions and donations. The deficit was much smaller than the previous year's, and the fund balance at 31st March 2008 had been £615.08.
As of 27th November 2008, there were 14 members and the current balance was £592.29.
There was no proposal to increase subs, because the group had sufficient funds.
The GB7GLO mailbox and MLVN node were still in use by a small number of people.
Paula G8PZT reported that there were now only around 5 active users on GB7PZT. The KIDDER node continued to be used by a small number of people, but several of the links were no longer working.
Stewart G0LGS said that the GB7LGS mailbox had been closed down due to hardware and software problems, plus a lack of users. The node had been left on for use by DX cluster traffic. It was now running XRouter in VMWare, and its future was uncertain.
There being no other proposals, the main officers were re-elected en-bloc, the committee for 2008/2009 being as follows:
Chairman G4FPV Secretary G8PZT Treasurer G0EWH Ordinary 2E0OAC and G0LGS.
The present auditor, John Scott G8UAE, was willing to continue and was re-elected.
There was a discussion about whether or not we should hold meetings, and whether the group should continue to exist at all, considering the declining interest in packet and fragmentation of the network?
Paula felt that regular meetings kept us focussed, but as no-one other than the committee ever turned up, it may be easier to hold virtual meetings via MSN. However, in the absence of any feedback from the 2008 Packet Conference her view was regrettably that, apart from APRS, Packet Radio as we knew it was defunct. It had no purpose now that mobile broadband was commonplace, and she couldn't see anyone bothering to mess with TNC's and radios just to sit and wait for text at a snails pace. The only future she could see for data-over-radio lay with D-Star.
Steve G4FPV's view was that the group should be wound up, with GRG taking over some parts of the network, and KRG taking over other parts. The funds could be split between the two repeater groups.
The consensus was that, with the network getting smaller and the number of sites decreasing, the group was less viable in its current form. We would continue to the end of the financial year, then hold an EGM to decide the future, with one of the proposals being to transfer the assets to GRG and KRG, who may use them to pursue more modern digital projects.
Stewart G0LGS mentioned the success of GRG's PayPal option for subs and donations. Paula said she'd had the British version, NoChex on the KRG site for some years but no-one had ever used it.
There being no other business, the AGM business concluded at 21:20.
Minutes by Paula G8PZT [secretary]