MANATEE AMATEUR RADIO CLUB, INC.
MINUTES Membership Business Meeting
November 04 2008

The meeting was called to order by Geoff Haynes, N1GY, President, at 7:00 PM
We gave the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.
Introductions were held, those attending were counted and a quorum was established.
The minutes from the previous meetings were accepted as published on the web site www.manatee-arc.org.
The treasures report was given and accepted.
We have a of $2757.38, and a CD with Wachovia Bank for $1192.

Roger gave an update on the Tech Classes
We have a new tech class starting at 08:00, Saturday 15, November 2008. It will be held at fire station number 4. At this time we have 12 people signed up for the class.

Frank Morton reported that the next VP session is 09:00, Saturday 20 December 2008 at the Red Cross Building on 59 St.
The next Board Meeting will be at 19:00 Tuesday, November 18 2008 at Geoff’s house, all are welcome.
The Christmas party will at the Anna Marie Oyster House at 6906 14th St. starting at 18:30 Tuesday, December 2 2008, Please call Geoff if you want to attend. We have to know how many are attending by the 15th Of November.

There will be no ARES meeting in December due to poor attendance in the past. Frank got a call from Steve, he has been down with food poising and is now back to work, he reported to Frank that work done by ARES and the club worked perfectly and the county was very happy with our work.
ARES is going to work on having classes, level one, two and three. Anyone that deploy anywhere in the county must have level one training which is very simple, if you are going to be a person that goes to any shelter you must get in touch with Lew and get a Red Cross Badge.

Bob brought up the fact that dues are due at the January Meeting; it’s not a good idea to bring the money to the Christmas Party. The dues for 2009 / 2010 are $25.00 for regular membership and an additional $5.00 dollars for a family member.

The program for the evening was how to solder and after doing it for 50 years I did not think it would be very interesting, boy was I wrong. Geoff brought it several different type irons, battery operated, butane operated and many special types of electrical irons. I found the butane iron “Thermasolder 500 K” interesting because it heated up fast and is very useful when used in the field or on a tower, it had several tips and was in a nice box but the cost was a bit high, I don’t remember what it was, I saw one at Sears that only had one tip but could do hot air soldering for $17.99 plus butane. Geoff had some small books about soldering and a list of web sites about soldering. Geoff demonstrated an iron called cold heat, the way they operate is by passing current through the solder, and it is cold almost as soon as it is removed from the contact.

BOY! THATS HOT	GEOFF'S DISPLAY

Tom Stockebrand, N5YYE, brought a big display about soldering surface mount components. I thought all that was done by machine but he says no small projects and repair can be done by hand and he says its easer then using a drilled board, the whole curse in surface mount soldering is in four courses, the first two and concerned with putting them on and the second two are concerned in taking them off. Putting them on concerns using tweezers and a magnifying glass one interesting point was how to keep the solder from forming a bridge, that you smothering it with solder flux, flux repels bridges, and then slide the iron across the contacts. I am going to save up some old boards of the surface type and practice, for small parts the trick is to use a special set of tweezers called reversing tweezers, you pinch them together to grasp the part then release them to hold the part. He had several soldering irons with special used to for ICs shaped it such a way so as to heat all the contacts at the same time.
After the presentation the meeting was adjourned and the 50/50 was held.

SOLDERING TIPS	SURFACE MOUNT PARTS	SURFACE MOUNT PARTS
SPECIAL SOLDERING IRONS	SURFACE MOUNT CIRCUIT BOARD	SOLDERING STATION

Respectively Submitted.
Jerry Johnson, AE4XW, Secretary