June 2020 - PSDR - mailman.hamwan.org

Re: [HamWAN PSDR] VOTE: Blyn HamWAN Site
by Marc Lacy 24 Jun '20

24 Jun '20

Seems a little high for 1 rj45 connector. I'm assuming that is for a package? 73 de KD7RYY Marc

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Rattlesnake HamWAN site is on-line
by Bart Kus 23 Jun '20

23 Jun '20

Hello, After weeks of work, I can finally declare the Rattlesnake site (47.469984°, -121.820954°) open for business. We made another visit to Rattlesnake this past weekend, and managed to get 2 sectors installed at the top of the tower. There is now HamWAN service firing at about 340 degrees @ 5920MHz and about 90 degrees @ 5900MHz. The sectors were rotated counter-clockwise slightly from our regular 0 and 120 degree bearings to optimize service for the local area. We also installed a PTZ camera at the top of the Rattlesnake tower, which has been working great. Given the really long task list, we didn't get through everything in the 1 day, so we need to do another visit this weekend. The remaining items are: 1) Install ice shield for 60GHz dish on stubby tower. 2) Install shield + high speed modem on Baldi facing dish. 3) Install missing cable cushions on the tall tower. Rattlesnake should be completed at that point, and our next weekend adventure will take us to Blyn. --Bart

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Receipt for donations to HamWAN
by Marc Lacy 22 Jun '20

22 Jun '20

Good Morning. I have been advised by my tax advisor that in order to take an income tax deduction for a donation to HamWAN that a receipt from HamWAN is needed. My question is how do we acquire said receipt from HamWAN? Regards 73 de KD7RYY Marc

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Re: [HamWAN PSDR] OPP Users: Please don't upgrade to 6.47
by Marc Lacy 21 Jun '20

21 Jun '20

Would it be advisable do downgrade? 73 de KD7RYY Marc

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OPP Users: Please don't upgrade to 6.47
by Bart Kus 21 Jun '20

21 Jun '20

Hello, If you're an OPP user or an uplink node relying on IPsec, please don't upgrade your IPsec router to RouterOS 6.47. It looks like Mikrotik has changed something significant enough in that release that it's breaking certificate-based authentication. This broke several of our uplink nodes as they went through upgrades. We need time to research the new behavior and provide guidance. If you're already familiar with what's broken here, feel free to share! Thanks, --Bart

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Re: [HamWAN PSDR] Board Election
by Marc Lacy 20 Jun '20

20 Jun '20

Greetings to the board of HamWAN I recently applied to board membership. I apologize if my initial request was somewhat vague, as that was intentional. Nigel then requested a "short blurb" to assist the group in making an informed decision. I complied, albeit somewhat lacking in context. Now that the initial tumult has subsided, I will attempt to fill in some of the blanks. 1. Technical skills are severely lacking. I am but a student and some might even consider that my meager skills and knowledge make me dangerous. I am constantly in awe of the level of expertise on the board of HamWAN, and seriously doubt that I could ever really contribute to the network administration 2. My other skills and experience in business and management might be of interest to the board of HamWAN. I have advised Ryan Turner when he was starting Memphis HamWAN on several issues concerning finance and accounting. Due to client confidentiality issues, no detail will be available unless he desires to share. However, when Ryan was putting together his advisory team, he apparently did a background search and discovered that I hold Washington CPA certificate #13854. Yes, I am a CPA(inactive). 3. the above reference to honorifics reminds me that I can put more letters after my name than I have in my name, if I choose to do so. That would appear something like the following: Marc A Lacy, CPA(inactive), CMA, MBA, MSgt USAF retired. All of this occurred before I became KD7RYY Amateur Extra. As some of you may recall, I served as ARES District 4 DEC for 12 years. 4. The issue arose as to what have I been doing lately. Well, in addition to supporting HamWAN at every opportunity, such as the setting up at Meshapaloosa the HamWAN equipment that Tom Hayward brought and the installation at Larch Mountain, and linking my own equipment to Larch, not too much. There has not been much activity in this geographic area as far as HamWAN. There have, however, been many other projects such as the restoration of the Collins TCS-12 receiver located on PT658, the build out of the physical gigabit wired network for PT658, the starting of an amateur radio club on LCI713 for operation during the Museum Ships on-the-air annual event etc. There was no real shortage of things to do until we got corona'd. 5. Darcy has raised the issue, as have many others in the past, about not for profit governance. This is something that HamWAN needs to take a look at. My experience with not for profit entities is extensive, and includes serving a term on the board of the WSCPA's in Bellevue. My current involvement includes serving as the treasurer for a veterans not for profit organization in Vancouver, Voiture99 of the organization "40 et 8" . This group, up until March 17, 2020, was producing 30% of the bingo gambling revenue in the state of Washington. Now I expect that with a little bit more explanation, some of the board may see that there is some use to be made of this basket of skills and experience. Going forward, I would like to see the Board of HamWAN develop and publish a more detailed plan for expansion. The physical plant has grown to the point over time that maintenance and upgrades need to be planned for and funded. Therefore, in addition to a plan, a fiscal plan is needed, to include sourcing money either through donations or financing or grants. This brings me to the point that prompted me to "Jump In". That point being the recent discussion concerning grants from the money acquired by AMPR selling off addresses. I would like to remind everyone that it has been reported recently that there is cocaine residue on nearly every $20.00, $50.00, and $100.00 bill in circulation. Because that money is tainted, are you not going to accept it as currency? Money is money. So back to the need for a 5 year plan, to include grants and donations: where you going to get funding? what is the growth rate of HamWAN? Can the growth be sustained using the current financial model? What external sources of funding are available? Would it be possible for HamWAN clients to get grants from this tainted pool of money and increase demand for HamWAN far beyond the capabilities of the current financial model? Well, there it is. The Board of HamWAN has some serious thinking and planning to do. I would suggest that the board go on a retreat somewhere, turn off your technology, and figure this stuff out. As soon as possible. Now for the recommendation of Bart. I greatly respect your opinion. I do not wish to become a part of another organization board that is fraught with contentiousness. The most common failure of any organization is succession planning. That is what is implied in the shark tank when the potential investors ask "what is your exit strategy? ( BTW in a past lifetime i was the CFO for a DOTCOMM startup.)Eventually a startup will grow beyond the abilities of its founders to be managed effectively. When that happens, the founders need to take a serious look at how to structure for a larger organization. In my opinion, HamWAN has reached or will soon reach that critical mass. Bottom line - I withdraw my application for board member for now. I offer my support in any way the board desires to make use of my skills, and I may consider applying in the future.

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Re: [HamWAN PSDR] Board Election
by Marc Lacy 19 Jun '20

19 Jun '20

Nigel, Certainly. I have been involved with Hamwan for quite some time. I helped with the initial install on Larch, and have had my link established for two years now. I am an Extra Class license, first licensed in 2002. Prior to that I was a military radio guy working in microwave point to point and satellite communications. Although I am not as well skilled as others, I have been learning about the TCP/IP side of things . I do have an AMPR allocation, and a Hamshack Hotline IP phone. I would like to see HamWAN expanding further into EOC's throughout Western Washington I have several contacts within District 4 that I can work with towards achieving this. I have some skill with wiring, and have a setup for doing surveys. The standard has changed since my purchase of the 5SHPN, so I may need to modernize my portable station just a little bit. I do not climb anymore, but I can haul or drag cargo to almost any hilltop with a semi-passable road. 73 de KD7RYY Marc

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HamWAN Board Director Elections
by Nigel Vander Houwen 19 Jun '20

19 Jun '20

Hello Everyone, It is once again time for our annual elections for the HamWAN Board of Directors. Here’s a quick recap of the main points for those that need a refresher. Board member positions last for one year. Any Supporting Member is eligible to vote for board members. Any Supporting Member is eligigle to run for a position on the board. There is no limit on the number of board members. If you feel you would be valuable, you’re not taking a seat away from someone else. There is a minimum of 3 board members required by the constitution. Each board member is a separate election. IE you don’t have to choose only one person to vote for, you choose Yea or Nay for all individuals. Please respond to the list here with your votes. This serves as our public record. In the above, we make use of the term Supporting Member, this is a specifically defined criteria in the constitution, which are individuals who have contributed at the Basic Level ($20/mo)(or more) for at least the last 6 months. Both the time and money criteria must be met to count. I have asked Cory who has acted as Treasurer for us for a number of years now to pull together the current list of Supporting Members, which are listed below. There have been a couple instances of employer matching this year that we weren’t able to attribute a source to, so if you feel that you’ve been missed in this list, I apologize. Please reach out and we’ll get it sorted. The current Supporting Members are: Bart Kus Bob Edmiston Carl Leon Casey R Hickerson Cathy Jo Melton Conny O Jonsson Cory Johnson David Giuliani David Yost Doug Kingston Dylan Ambauen Ian Gallagher John C Miller Kenneth Richards Marc Lacy Mark Sheppard Mike Shirley Nigel Vander Houwen Randolph Neals Robert Salsgiver Ronald Zuber Ryan Turner Terence Chan Tom Hayward I would like to thank everyone, Supporting Members and not, for your contributions to the project. HamWAN continues to grow, new clients, EOCs, and sites expanding coverage are all great progress. There’s always more to do, but I remain impressed at what we’ve accomplished with a small core group of operations folks, and a dedicated set of volunteers out in the field (with some overlap between the two of course). I have spoken with each of the current directors, who have each expressed interest in continuing to serve if re-elected, so here is our current list of directors up for voting: Cory Johnson - Cory has graciously handled HamWAN’s finances and legal filings and reports for the last several years. I very much appreciate his continued work here making sure everything gets taken care of. Rob Salsgiver - Rob has taken much of the project organization tasks, which for the number of projects in the field we have, is often like wrangling a herd of cats. I very much thank him for his efforts, and I look forward to what this summer’s work season will bring (and has already started to bring in recent weeks). Doug Kingston - Doug does much of the work managing our inventory. As with above, with many projects going on, keeping track of what gear we have ready to deploy and what we need more of can be a significant effort. Thank you Doug! Tom Hayward - Tom has done fantastic work over the years both in developing several of the applications (like the management portal, abuse detection, and more), as well as often acts as one of our tower climbers for installs. Certainly invaluable. Nigel Vander Houwen (me) - I handle many of the administrative tasks for the org. Record keeping for technical aspects of the org like LoAs, handle any contract items, and manage things like this email/vote. In addition to the current directors, I’ve spoken with Bart Kus, who has been a director in the past, as well as started the HamWAN project. He bowed out last year due to personal issues, but has indicated he would be willing to serve this year if elected. Thank you Bart. For anyone else who wishes to run for the board, please send an email here to the mailing list announcing your intention to run. The voting period on your election will end 7 days after your announcement. Duties are not time intensive, and mostly consist of being available for occasional votes to approve expenses. This email will begin the voting for: Cory Johnson Rob Salsgiver Doug Kingston Tom Hayward Bart Kus Nigel Vander Houwen Thank you all for reading this rather long email, and I hope to continue working with everyone in this next year. Nigel Vander Houwen

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HamWAN Board elections
by Rob Salsgiver 18 Jun '20

18 Jun '20

Cory Johnson - Yea Rob Salsgiver - Abstain Doug Kingston - Yea Tom Hayward - Yea Bart Kus - Abstain Nigel Vander Houwen - Yea Marc Lacy - Yea

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Re: [HamWAN PSDR] Board Election
by Marc Lacy 18 Jun '20

18 Jun '20

Bart, The issues that have kept me involved in other projects have all, except one, been resolved. It is true I have not been highly involved for the past two years. Having said that, how many hamwan projects near (within 75 miles) my qth have there been in the last 2 years? On the other hand, your opinion carries weight with me. As far as withdrawing my request, let me think about that. 73 de KD7RYY Marc

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