Good morning, here is the news.
******MIRA MESA********
Meeting Space—This continues to be a unique issue for us. To review, our Library has very few evening hours due to budget cutbacks, and those are largely spoken for by groups that have been using the facilities for a long time. Our Senior Center already supports a large number of groups and cannot take us on (they were very apologetic). The local shopping malls don't seem to have community rooms (I could be wrong about this, someone correct me). So we need other ideas, possibly your church or condo has a room we can get to at night or some such. Please give me your suggestions and a contact if you have one, I will follow up on all leads.
Team Meeting—Monday, January 10, 2011. If we get meeting space (see above) then I'd like to do wound care review. Otherwise, we may do our radio drill. For those of you who weren't here last year, you start this drill at your own residence with your own FRS radio (we have some to loan if you don't have one). I will go to our rally point, and issue a controlled net broadcast at a preset time (more on controlled net later) over an FRS radio channel. If you can hear me, you respond with a standard message. If you can't you drive about half the distance to the rally point and try again. We do NOT want anyone operating a radio while driving. We meet briefly at the rally point, plot our reception on a map of Mira Mesa, and break. It's a short drill, you can learn a lot about communicating over the radio, and you learn something about what FRS can do. We'll do this in the next several months if we don't do it in January. Don't worry if my description did not make total sense, I will have a lot more when we do this drill.
*******BATTALION 5********
Continuing Education—8 January 2011 (Saturday), time to be determined. This isn't on the site yet, I heard about it at a meeting. The date is coming right up, so if you are interested please mark your calendar. One of the other Battalions is sponsoring a survival training class that many of us have taken. This course is conducted by Tom Beasley and Susan Coniry, survivalists and authors of "Ready or Not, a Disaster Survival Handbook". Please Note: If you have taken this course for CE credit in the last 12 months, you cannot take it again for CE credit. I will try to get more detail on this, and will let you know by special announcement when registration goes up on the site.
Occasional Rant—If you still have someone bugging you to give them ideas for holiday gifts, don't forget FRS radios if you don't have them. I've noticed recently that the selection at our local stores has pared down quite a bit, but you can still get nearly anything online. For our purposes, the "range" of the radio you buy doesn't make much difference. Here are some features that most of us agree are useful:
· Get FRS/GMRS if possible. You need a license for GMRS, but it is somewhat more capable, and you might one day want the license.
· Some level of water resistance is useful, but waterproof probably is not worth it (they can be expensive)
· Rechargeable is desirable, but if you get rechargeables, be sure they are the kind that have a removable battery you can replace with AA cells. You won't find to many 110V outlets in the field.
· We've found that radios that use AA batteries last longer than radios that use AAA batteries.
· Two radios is a great idea; if you deploy locally you might be able to communicate with your home now and then.
That's all for this week. Questions, comments, see your Team Leader.
-Steve
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