SADXA President, AC2K - Alan, opened the meeting, and reminded us of the DX Challenge . 

W7TUS - Mike, our Secretary/Treasurer reported that we are solvent.

  N7WS - Wes, gave us the .

K7NN - Don played us a short  video titled "FT8CALL is NOT the end of Ham Radio as we know it" narrated by K0LWT.  FT8CALL is a version of FT8 that allows keyboard to keyboard chat.  Either way, it has been now renamed to JS89CALL.  I guess it got too many folks all stirred up.  Don asked how many would us it for chat and nobody held up their hand.

After the video, Don opened to floor to our guest speaker for the evening, K7DF - Tom for his presentation on Lightning.   

AC2K - Alan said that he got his hex beam back up on the tower and within an hour or so, a gust of wind took it down.   Maybe Alan is not destined to have an antenna.

  K7NN - Don  Puts us all to shame with his DXploits saying that he now has 109 counties on 60 meters, his total is 190 with OH0 Aland Island ATNO digital country.  He has 610 Grid Squares on 6 meters with two new countries EL2 and FG for a total of 68 countries.  There were poor conditions on 6 meters with only two openings to Japan and one to Europe this year.  Yes, it has been confirmed, Don does, indeed, sleep by his radios.

K7RJ - Ron said he'd been having some fun with QRP while they were in Colorado and had worked a few western sates and one in Virginia with 5 watts and a compromise antenna.

N7BDZ - Elaine continued the story of Ron's QRP activity.  They were visiting family,  staying at an Air B&B in Grand Junction, CO. that had a number of big trees.  There was on big tree just outside a bedroom window and Ron was standing there figuring out how to put the tree to use when the landlady says "Oh, tomorrow morning they are going to take out that old tree." She thought he was just admiring the tree and had no idea he was thinking of using the tree to support an antenna.  In any case, he did find a suitable tree for a mostly horizontal wire, about  60 feet long and around 20 feet tall. The landlady even helped him install the antenna and loaned a ladder to help free it when it got tangled in some branches.

W9FI - Jim had worked his 199th country on digital when he tried the newer  mode and worked Nicaragua for his 200th.

KB7AZ - Carl woked a new country in the IARU DX contest and now has 258 countries.

K7DF - Tom said that because of his acquired and previous experience with a catastrophic lightning strike, he unhooks, rolls up the coax and talks his antennas down for the monsoon season. That's about as protected as you can get.

N7FG - Frank told of hiking in Colorado with his family and they used FRS to commnicate and it worked very well. Maybe not ham radio, but it was radio, right?

N7WS - Wes worked one new country on 160, Columbia, and during the IARU, he worked 80 contacts and gave up.  Said that right after he shut down, the bands opened up according to the accounts by those reporting this evening.

KE7ZPI - Elizabeth said that she was celebrating her 10th anniversary of being a Ham and has recently graduated from the U of A. Congratuations, Elizabeth

AA7FV - Darrell said he hadn't anything to report as far as DX is concerned but, even with the band conditions, he had managed to have a 20 minute rag chew on 20 meter CW on a regular basis.

W7DCM - Dave has been focusing on Sporadic E on 6 meters as well as 10 meters. He said that was disappointing and he has returned to 40 meters where he's scored several Europeans in the early evening hours.  He is declaring entry into the DX Challenge in the Low Power CW class and so far, he's racked up 11 entities.

W7EXG - Bill worked 53 unique countries, 12 ITU zones on 80 meters, 25 zones on 40 meters, 30 zones on 20 meters, 10 zones on 15 meters and 1 zone on 10 meters in the IARU Championship.

The winner of the SADXA drawing and a $25 certificate good a at was AA7FV - Darrell.  Congratulations, Darrell.