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BA-MARC
Meeting Notes – August, September & October, 2001
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Recently,
newsletters have taken a back seat to club event
support activities, but our biggest distractions were
the homeland attacks and their aftermaths that all of
us are in the midst of enduring. While our chapter's
news has been slow in getting out, our group has made
good progress in setting and achieving goals. Here is
what we've been up to in the San Francisco Bay Area
between August and November of 2001:
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August:
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Our
July Pie Race Results were digested and a rematch is
in the works. It seems we can't agree on who had the
most and which flavor we liked best. Only way to
resolve this is to do a rematch and hope we don't eat
the test results.
In
late July we supported the Oakland chapter of MS in
their Redwood City "Tour de Jour." This was
a three-course event that covered about 175 miles. Net
Control communications experienced a lot of
difficulty, but as a motorcycle team supporting the
Blackberry React group, we found a local repeater to
use to keep the event support alive and used cell
phones to keep net control updated.
An
ELMER project and web site section was voted in during
August. We are hoping to grow some hams out of the
local motorcycle population that live in the greater
San Francisco bay area. To help make this project
effective, four members, Warren Birmingham K6PHW,
Frank Nielsen KG6ELK, Sandra Pacheco KG6HHP and Ralph
Burr KG6BHP signed up to act as a steering committee
for this continuing education program.
Next
year's events where we support the entire event have
been limited to the following:
| ADA-Walk
- October 7th 2001 |
| ADA
Tour de Cure Redwood City May, 2002 |
| MS
Watsonville - June 15th 2002 |
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September:
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During
our September meeting, which was also our group's
first anniversary, we spread around some of the
responsibilities so our performance in the various
areas would improve. Here is the list of position
assignments for the next year:
Group
Leader - Roger Rines W1RDR will stay on point for
another year. Club Advertising & Promotional
material will be handled by David Sawyer
K1DRS. He
will be responsible for creating, or buying our
posters and seeing they are given out to the members
to be placed in the various places around the bay
area.
Warren
Birmingham K6PHW has agreed to be the Ride Planner
responsible for planning and laying out various rides
for the group over the course of the next year.
Event
Planning will go to Larry McDonald K6ACE. Larry will
take on the role of assigning a member, or attending
the charity-planning meetings himself and he or the
assigned member will also recruit support for each
event.
Newsletter,
article and web site editing was picked up by Ralph
Burr KG6BHP. Ralph will be the person responsible for
polishing our publications so that they are ready for
publishing. With three of us in BA-MARC using English
as a second language and most of us wearing
"Propeller Hats," grammar doesn't come easy,
but we all think what we publish should be readable
without decryption software so Ralph will be our
translator.
Our
monthly newsletter updates will now move over to
Warren Birmingham K6PHW for the coming year. Warren
has been doing a good job of recording meeting
decisions and plans and will now add picture taking,
or getting someone in the group to take pictures for
the monthly newsletters.
Fund-Raising,
or how do we pay the monthly expenses fell to
everyone. We decided to toss money into a shoebox and
use a slush fund to keep the groups needs feed. Warren
Birmingham K6PHW holds the shoebox and is keeping a
contribution/expense spreadsheet for this distraction.
As
part of our new ELMER project, we asked for responses
to these questions on our own BA-MARC & MARC
mailing list:
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What was it about
Amateur Radio that interested you to seek a
license? |
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During the process
of preparing for the test, what worked well
for you? |
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While trying to
learn the rules, theory and lingo, what
didn'tt work well, or maybe even has become
an impediment to your progress? |
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What was missing
from the materials, ELMER sessions (if any),
or any other resources or ideas that would
have made the transition simpler or more
interesting? |
Unfortunately, responses to these questions
were so dismal we didn't get enough meaningful
information to help us improve our understanding on
how to approach the recruitment and training issues
for new recruits. If anyone not responding to these
questions before would like to respond, I'll add the
input to what we received and try to learn from it.
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October:
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Our
ADA Walk performance was a real hit and we are
building on our string of success. As we collect
successful events under our belt, the local ham
community has been noticing we are around and has been
more available to helping us with events. Event
organizers have also been sending us great letters of
appreciation that we will scan and post on our BA-MARC
web site soon.
During
the ADA Walk, we learned a lot about helping out in
this type of fund-raiser. Unlike bicycle events,
everything happened in close, but the city streets
where the event took place seemed to take a long time
to navigate. In addition, having a walk event in a
city like Palo Alto, CA was too big a shopping
distraction for some of the participants as we found
ourselves looking in stores and parks for missing
people who strayed from the planned course. Still, the
event raised almost 200K dollars with only around 550
walkers. Helping with a walk is also a short day. We
started at 7:00 AM and were packed and ready to leave
by 2:00 PM that afternoon.
Here
are those who helped with this American Diabetes
event:
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On motorcycles:
David
Sawyer
K1DRS, Warren Birmingham K6PHW and
Larry McDonald K6ACE. |
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SAG
wagons:
Sandra Pacheco KG6HHP, Stuart
Chessen KF6RZR and Martin Brown AD6FG. |
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Tunnel, parking and
event control and supply delivery:
Collin
Lim KD6YCV, Richard Tidd KE6HNY, Allen
Glesser AB6UA, Bryan Klofas KF6ZEO and two
non-hams Craig Welch and Colleen Welch. |
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Rest Stops were
manned by:
J.P. Rouland
NQ6T on his bicycle, Frank Nielsen KG6ELK,
Max Malzkuhn K6MAX, Peter Berman KG6HRY. |
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Net
Control:
Ralph Burr KG6BHP
and Roger Rines W1RDR. |
From
a communications side, we had 9-BA-MARC members and 5
other hams keeping the event information moving. This
was our largest ham staffing for an event up here and
it made a world of difference to not have to ask
people to move from one assignment to another.
Our
Elmer Project will soon have a web section on our site
that we'll use to coordinate the training and support
for new hams. As of now, we have 13 GWRRA members of
CA2S lined up to go through our first group training
class. If luck is with me, I'm hoping to get my bride
Sharon converted during this first class. We are also
registered with the ARRL as instructors and will now
received discounts on their publications.
In
next year's plans, a group of us from the bay area
plan on being at the annual MARC meeting in May. If
anyone hasn't made a MARC meeting yet, or if it has
been a while since you were there, this next May's
meeting is the one to pencil in. Anyone else in the
state of Northern California and higher up wanting to
travel to this event as a part of our rat-tag group
should me a line so we can coordinate our schedules.
Our
monthly meetings will happen on Thursday evenings at
7:00PM at the Omega Restaurant in Milpitas, CA. We've
changed the day and time to give us a weekend day we
can use to schedule a ride. Rides for next year are
now posted on our RIDE page of the BA-MARC web site
and are open to everyone.
73s,
Roger...
W1RDR
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