A small group of ORSI members got together during the OKC Ham Holiday 2017. Since the turnout was small and our president Duane KC5NID couldn't make it. Also our NE, SE, and SW directors weren't there, we just held some informal discussions.

1. We want to stick with the format of alternating the site for the Fall meeting between the Enid Hamfest and the Texoma Hamarma in alternating years. Therefore, this years meeting will be at Ardmore during the Texoma Hamarama during the last weekend of October. (We might have an ORSI interest table at Enid, but no meeting this year.)

KE5GLC 443.975 Ada PL 114.8 is now fully operational according to the Pontotoc County Amateur Radio Association.

N5KNU 442.5 in Edmond (OKC District) is now a DMR repeater Color Code 1, on a 400' tower should have great coverage.

W4NFD 443.125 in Porum another new DMR machine linked into the Chicago Land C-Bridge, which has many repeaters on it, Color Code 1. Right now only about 80' HAAT, but the trustee says he is trying to get a taller tower for it.

As many of you are aware, the Voice/Data over IP modes are rapidly gaining foothold in amateur radio. So far most of the requests for DMR and D-Star pairs here in Oklahoma have been on the 70 CM band, where plenty of open pairs are available. In central and far NE OK, two meter pairs are not available for any kind of repeater. Missouri is experiencing the same problem, especially in their major metro areas, like St. Louis and Kansas City. Like us, they want to encourage experimentation, and new technologies. So this is what they determined for two meters.

We received kind of an unusual request from a Mr. David Huntz NH6SM of Jones, OK. He is proposing a simplex calling frequency of 147.525 MHz, for users of the C4FM mode. If you are not familiar with C4FM, that is a digital voice mode promoted primarily by Yaesu, but there are other manufacturers that make equipment capable of operating on this mode. Yes digital audio is authorized in the two meter band by the FCC. Although the VoIP modes such as D-Star, DMR, P25, as well as C4FM are much more used on 70 CM. According to Mr.

The W5IAS repeater near Guthrie will move from 443.25 to 443.925 MHz still with an 88.5 PL tone. The change was fully approved on 3/21/2017, and will be made on or about 3/25. The move is being made due to some harmful interference they were experiencing on their input frequency. There seemed to be some unlicensed operators talking to each other on the input frequency. The control operator Dan K5FVL said he was not sure if they were even aware they keying up the repeater. The unlicensed operators are believe to be in the Guthrie area, but the machine is on a four hundred ft.

During the Meeting at the Enid Hamfest back in November, our long time SE District Officer Jim Russel WK5Y officially stepped down, basically retiring and he has moved out of the SE District We elected his replacement David Weeks KD5JCX of McAlester. The SE district is all counties in Oklahoma that are east of I-35 and south of I-40 which are not in the Tulsa District or the Oklahoma City district. We will get you more information on David soon. We would like to thank Jim for his many years of service as an ORSI director,