Newsletter for May 2002
PO Box 2283, Weaverville, CA 96093 - WEBSITE- http://www.tcoek12.org/~tcarc/
All donations are encouraged - items which are in good shape from your home, and also from your neighbor's home, but, please, check all items to see that they are in useable condition. Donations may be left at Vi and Ed's house during the week preceding June 1st. Vi says she will need help in setting up for the sale on Friday evening.
This is a fun thing for those participating, many bring food with them, and a lot of laughing takes place. You may even bring baked goods to sell if you wish, and even cash donations are entirely acceptable! We hope to see you and your donations there....
Election of officers will be held prior to the dinner, along with a brief business meeting. Spread the news, and meet us there.
The Big Bar Station has recently re-opened. It is directly across the street from the Midway Mart store, which is just past the post office in Big Bar, heading west on Highway 299.
Another important item: KB6EHA Rusty Carpenter will be home and at the dinner, and we all look forward to seeing him. He says he will be happy to see us, including new folks who have joined the club since he was here. He will be on military leave, prior to going to Afghanistan, so let us turn out to see him!
WA6BXN was there for sometime, but HE BROUGHT THE DONUTS! Which were most welcome, believe me.
Greg, WB6FZH, set up a 5watt QRP Packet station, using a 1/4 wave magnetic mount antenna tossed up on the roof of the ECU. The station contacted WD6FHX directly via packet and also used the local digipeater. At 3:PM when the International Space Station passed 250 miles above Weaverville, Greg, send a beacon message "Greetings from the Trinity County Disaster Preparedness Fair in Weaveville, CA...." the latitude and longitude was also formatted into the message and it not only was visible on packet screens from BC Canada North, to Mexico South, to Texas in the East, but was displayed on the Internet APRS ARISS page map of the US. This clearly demonstrated the ability of a small deployable Ham Radio Station to place information over a wide-area! Yes, Ham Radio is not just dots and dashes anymore-.. WB6FZH (This paragraph added for Web Edition)
The theme of the amateur radio specialty convention that day was centered on disaster preparedness. It began at 0800 (you can bet we were red-eyed when we arrived home at 2000 that night), and was the most well-carried convention I have attended EVER, that means subject content and control of the many speakers who were on the program.
K6BZ Jerry Boyd led off and introduced WA6SLA Bill Pennington, assistant to the OES chief in California, who presented some items of interest concerning local governments with registered communication units and use on special events. In my notes Mutual Aid - ID cards are irrelevant!? Some hot discussion followed on his statement re the id cards. Another outstanding remark he made was "Be organized and notify Mutual Aid director when your unit is being split between ARES, VIP, etc. Especially critical during a major emergency."
Some remarks by WV1X Steve Ewald, from ARRL, he reminded us that ARRL has MOUs with many agencies such as Red Cross, FEMA and others.
Moving on, I enjoyed remarks from K6SOJ Dave Thorne in his "Back to Basics" presentation. His main remark centered around presenting communications in a clear, concise manner, and then get off. "Keep your talk legal. Ignore jammers!".
The "Ready Kits" presentation by NN7B Paul Cavnar from Nevada was particularly good. Get Gregg to share that one with you.
After a barbecued hamburger lunch served by the Anderson Club, TKY and I attended the 3-hour Traffic Handling Radiograms and More. We practiced preparing Radiograms much of that three hours. Stuck with it and got our certificates at about 5:15 p.m.
While we were in the Traffic Handling, HOR Buck and FZH Greg were attending the 3-hour course American Red Cross Introduction to Disaster Services. They will probably have some stories on that one! And Buck said he was going back on Sunday for Day 2.
In case you did not hear, the ECU was entered in the competition of emergency communication units. Thx to WB6JZN Ed for towing our unit down there,.and back. It took SECOND PLACE, with the one from Humboldt County Club taking first, but we liked ours best! More about that later....
CU later - N6TKX Evelyn, Editor TCARC Newsletter
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