At the March Meeting, the membership voted to increase the annual dues of the club. Rates had never been increased since the founding of the club so it was felt that we were well overdue. The rate increase is required to cover the cost of the recently purchased RAC liability insurance which provides coverage for club activities and for the personal coverage of club members who are also RAC members.

The new rate of $40.00 will begin with the 2012 membership year - dues start being collected in September of 2011.

Welcome and Congratulations to Charlie Scott who recently passed his licensing exam and now joins the club as VE7CMH. Charlie is perhaps the oldest new ham having recently celebrated his 89th.

In an effort to improve our image and to look professional when out in the public the club approved the purchase of a new banner. After some discussion as to what to include on the sign we settled on a simple look and here is the result.

Pat Morgan phoned today to report her Dad, Mel Mills, VE7MF passed away. Obit in next weeks paper.

It may be worth noting that Mel made known his appreciation of the WRARC executive granting him an honorary membership in the club.

He cherished and proudly displayed it.

The new duplexer has arrived. Ralph picked it up from the airport this afternoon. He then had Dave check it over. He said we got a good quality product that was well tuned for our needs. Ralph then brought it to Eric's garage where we put it into service. We did some immediate testing but didn't have any conclusive results. We also switched the repeater to using my X300 Diamond antenna, we will return to the normal antenna after a few days of testing. Later in the evening I drove out to the Pennisula Village with my HT.