We received Maury's check in the mail this week. Thanks OM. That gets us down to only one unpaid for the year. Received a follow-up note from Matt at XX Towers--his bill is in the mail to the club. I'll be talking with Matt over the coming months about further improvements in the spring including small issues such as some new tie-off anchors for the wire antennas and larger issues such as a new 80 M antenna and the second HF antenna installation. I was glad to hear from Bill that Matt found the overall installation "safe and sound." Even the extra hard-line run showed no evidence of a short when tested with an ohmmeter. Weird, but we'll take it :-)

The club/storage room is being painted. I've contracted a local guy who paints as a sideline to do this area. He spent last Friday & Saturday doing prep-work on the walls and priming the pipes that now run through the room. Don't remember pipes up there? Well, now we have a bona-fide sprinkler system in the room. I don't see any problem with this. It's in the shack itself that we don't want sprinklers. And we were successful in pushing that point with the university officials. Anyway, the ceiling is being patched and painted and will be white when finished. The walls will be a light brown. The thought was to stay in-tune with the woodwork that runs throughout the building. A kind-of sandalwood brown seemed to echo that old and traditional Harvard motif :-) Another week and our painter should be finished up.

Dave finished up his work on the final draft of the new W1AF QSL. It looks great. Bill pointed out, however, that the photo still needed some work so he is going to attempt a bit more imaging wizardry before we go to press with the card.

We received notification of our annual gift from HWC alum Dave Greisinger this past week. This year, the gift is in the range of $550. I say 'in the range' of because what he gives us is the proceeds from the sale of several shares of stock. I have replied to the investment house that handles the gift and expect the check itself will arrive soon. This will go a long way in covering our remodeling efforts.

No time for operating this past week. None of us seems to have much time to get on the air these days. If all goes as planned with the painting, by next Tuesday, we'll be able to start rearranging the room. Hope to see (especially) our able-bodied undergrads at the meeting for a little decorating party. Tres chic, eh? Tuesday, January 12, 7:00 PM.