201302 February
Chairman: Gareth Parker Secretary: TBA Treasurer: Les Dixon Web Master: Owen Dawe
Executive Committee Dave Dingley Peter Shaw Ray Mankelow Robert Houison Bruce Grenville Patrick Casey
Third Executive Committee Meeting 201 2 /201 3 MINUTES Held: Tuesday 26 February 2013 Venue: Auckland VHF Group Inc, Branch 66 NZART clubrooms, Hazel Avenue, Mt Roskill
Opened: At 19:39by Gareth Parker Present: Members: Gareth Parker, Les Dixon, Eric Allen, Patrick Casey, Bruce Grenville, Peter Shaw, Robert Housison, Dave Dingley
Apologies: Ray Mankelow Motion: That the apologies be accepted Moved by Dave, seconded by Patrick. CARRIED UNANIMOUSLY
AGENDA 1. Approve the minutes of the last meeting These have not been received from Ray, so it was proposed to move onto the next item. Motion: That the minutes from the previous meeting be held over and the meeting move onto the next item. Moved by Peter, seconded by Dave. CARRIED UNANIMOUSLY
2. Correspondence There has been no correspondence received or sent since the last meeting.
3. Financial position Les explained that it was very straightforward, and he quoted from the most recent Society bank statement. Opening balance: $4299.20 31/03/2013 04:39:05 PM Page 1of 4 20130226 TSOLPFMBI 3rd EC meeting.odt Closing balance: $4299.20 This represents a healthy increase year on year when compared to the February 2012 balance which stood at $3288. In the last month there has been NO FINANCIAL ACTIVITY. Latinum payments have ceased (these were for the web site hosting – see later for update from Gareth on the state of The Society web site). The $10 month fee charged by the BNZ on The Society bank account “has been sorted” by Les. Apparently he secured this by a little firm talking with his favourite bank.
Motion: That the financial statement /position be accepted. Moved by Peter, seconded by Bruce. CARRIED UNANIMOUSLY
4. Transfer of the LPFM Web Site from the Latinum servers Gareth has completed moving the web site files to his own server. It was appreciated that this would have taken him quite some effort and time to complete. However, the DOMAIN NAME http://www.lpfmnz.com/is still registered to Charles Graves and needs to be sorted out. In the mean time, Gareth has registered http://www.lpfm.org.nz/in case there are problems. He did this at his own cost ($30.00). At this time BOTH web sites are operating, with the former seemingly frozen at November last year, and the latter up to date. Gareth proposed that the current domain should be re-directed to the new one so that folk who have bookmarked the old and are not aware of the change would still reach our site. Owen Dawe is currently having some difficulty in maintaining the web site due to phone line problems at Lake Tararewa. It would appear that a temporary linehas been put in, but it fails regularly, and there areissues with the local whanau in trying to run new lines in the area. A solution to this seems to be some way off. Les has been unable to sort out the domain name registration with Robert Dew, who has previously managed this for The Society. Dave suggested advising MED of the change to The Society web site, which Peter offered to do. Motion: That Gareth invoice Les $30.00 for The Society web site domain name registration and that Les pay it on behalf of The Society.
Moved by Dave, seconded by Bruce. CARRIED UNANIMOUSLY
5. Membership Fees (Les) Bruce started the discussion with a proposal that there be a DROP in the annual Society membership fee from $45 to $40. Les suggested keeping the status quo, and some discussion ensued. Eventually it was put to a vote… Motion: That the annual Society membership subscription be reduced from $45 to $40. Moved by Bruce, seconded by Patrick. A show of hands was required to settle the vote and was NOT CARRIED by some margin.
The general feeling was that this matter should be considered and discussed further with a view to making a recommendation to The Society for the AGM later in the year.
6. Increasing membership NRG circuit boards Gareth suggested that NRG circuit boards could be produced by The Society, and made available to Society members at a good price. He has been making up a template for the “NRG PLL PRO III Hi Gain 1-4watt TX” PCB using CAD on his computer. He will also produce the PCB templates for the other NRG staples – the compressor/limiter and stereo encoder, all of which are recognised as being reliable, perform to spec, and are cost effective. There was agreement that this was a very good idea. Robert stated that in his experience Tennatron (based in Nelson) is now making good transmitter equipment. He paid $800 for a made up 1 watt model, which was easy to set up and performs well. This brand could serve as a general replacement for NRG, should they continue to be unavailable. This led to a lengthy discussion on the supply of good reliable equipment with the demise of NRG and the lengthy delay with the UK based Kanga-NRG Kits (142 Tyldesley Road, Atherton, Manchester M46 9AB) in reintroducing the NRG range due to the difficulty of sourcing components. Regarding Gareth’s PCB project, there was discussion on copyright issues in copying the NRG design, and would be something The Society would need to clarify before embarking on the production of printed circuit boards. Should copyright issues be resolved, Dave commented that there are any number of quality manufacturers who could produce a run of PCBs at reasonable cost for The Society, and he mentioned manufacturers in countries such as Czechoslovakia and China. Robert suggested talking to Steve at Tennatron regarding a bulk deal for The Society, including compressor/limiter equipment. He stated that he would do this. There was also discussion led off by Robert on whether there was scope for The Society to become the NZ Agents for NRG equipment. Dave stated that Broadcast Warehouse gear is still very good, if somewhat more expensive, but it is NOT available as a kit set. Robert felt that at around $1,500 for the Broadcast Warehouse TX5, including built in limiter/compressor/stereo encoder, it was good value.
7. J-Pole continues to impress (Les) Les talked about his experience with Robertat Ngatea who made up a rough J-Pole for his station there, and was so impressed with the performance of it that he is making a properly constructed version of it. Robert told Les that he had heard the transmission equipment would need to be type approved by MED soon. This led to some discussion on the matter, captured in the next item.
8. Transmission equipment to become type approved? (Les) There seems to be some confusion based on third party information regarding a proposal to require all LPFM stations to use type approved transmission equipment (TX, limiter/compressor and stereo encoder). The feeling by those present at the meeting was “we are not so sure”! At this time, NOTHING OFFICIAL has been promulgated, and the GURL stands as listed on 17 June 2010 at: http://www.rsm.govt.nz/cms/licensees/types-of-licence/general-user-licences/low-power-fm-broadcasting/
9. Rental of the Auckland VHF Group Inc, Branch 66 NZART clubrooms (Les) Les advised that he has had no invoice yet. A payment for ONE YEAR IN ADVANCE was made last year. Dave advised he had spoken to the current President (Chairman?) recently, who thought we were paid up until August/September this year. This will need confirmation.
10. Dave away in July Dave stated that he and his wife are planning on going to Europe in July. He will need to arrange with the VHF group for the custody of the clubroom keys to be handed over to somebody else. Les was the obvious choice for this. It will also be incumbent on other people to organise the tea, coffee, milk, sugar and biscuits during his absence.
11. APRA fees paid by Robert Robert advised that he had recently been charged APRA fees for TWO stations (~$398), even though he is using 107.3 as a carrier for his main station on 88.3. The reality is that the 107.3 frequency acts as infill for some stations that can not pick up the 88.3 one, and therefore APRA refused to allow him to class his transmission as just one station. Robert is not particularly impressed. While Robert was discussing the matter with the man from APRA, it was let slip that APRA is going to be joining with RIANZ (PPNZ) in order collect one fee covering both regimes. Dave reiterated what we have stated before in Society minutes: • APRA: associated with AMCOS and represents ARTISTS •
RIANZ (PPNA): represents the music companies So we’re not too sure how the proposal will work.
There being no further business, the meeting was declared closed by the Chairman at 20:42. The next EC meeting is been planned for: Tuesday 26 th March 2013 Appendices: •
APPENDIX 1: NIL
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