In February, those of us that have been running Bored Net events took a big step, and formed a club. This is not meant to be a club that people would join, just the people working on events like the daily Bored Net, Micro Field Day, the Micro Expo, etc. There are several benefits in doing this.
Our purpose has been, ever since the net was started, to provide activities for ALL hams and ALL clubs in the county and area (as AG6AG said, we’re “club-agnostic”), and that’s what we will continue doing. Zak extracted promises that we would keep the daily net going for as long as the ham community wanted it…if people are checking in, we will have a net. He also wanted to be sure that our annual Silent Key net would continue, preferable at the Expo, and at some other event if that were not possible. So we will do that as well.
5 of us are currently “full members”, Keith Elliott W6KME (President.), Chuck Maslin W6CSM (Treasurer), Norm Campbell (Vice President), Matt Kaufman N3AR (Secretary), and Martin Hickey (At Large). The Full Members all pay an annual membership fee, which will cover about a third of our estimated annual costs. They make up the Board of Directors for the club, and as such, are limited to no more than 7. In addition to Full Members, there are Associate Members who support the group through donations of various kinds. There are several people who make regular contributions via Patreon. If you’re interested in supporting in other ways, talk to any of us (or see the Support Us link at the top of the page.)
This needs to be stressed-Full or Associate Membership is not required or even requested to take part in our events. What we do is for ALL hams and ALL clubs.
There are some regular expenses we have always incurred, like the domain registration for the website. But it’s increasingly clear that we need an insurance policy. By becoming a Club, we can apply for affiliation with the ARRL (currently pending), which gives us the ability to insure ourselves.
Once insurance has been obtained, we will be hard at work bring Micro Field Day back, since insurance had become a primary stumbling block.
And that Call Sign? We received it as part of the sequential series currently being issued. The net controllers during the morning net are welcome to use it, but it’s not a requirement. But for now, we’re KO6MZR. Yes, there are plans for a vanity call down the road, but we’ll talk about that later.
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