Good morning, here is the news. Remember, you'll get another email from me later with the Battalion-wide stuff in it.
April Team Meeting—10 April, Sunday. We're doing a joint meeting in April with the other teams in Battalion 5, North Coastal and Carmel Valley. Right now we're planning to have it at the Carmel Valley Recreation Center. I'd like to shoot for a 1:00 start time, plan on two hours. I think we will need RSVP for this one, we'll want to be sure to bring enough equipment to keep everyone busy. We'll practice basic rescue skills, including extraction, stabilizing the patient, loading, unloading and transport. Please get this one on your calendar if you possibly can, I would like to have you all meet our other Team Leaders Greg Hom (North Coastal) and Preston Drake (Carmel Valley), one of them could be at the helm on The Day, and you should get to know them. I'm going to get moving on coordinating this one with Greg and Preston over the next few days, and should have most of the details next week.
Last Month's Radio Drill—Somehow I don't think we got quite as good a coverage, but it wasn't bad. here's what I think we learned:
· We can still cover most of Mira Mesa with FRS radio, and buildings don't seem to make much of a difference, but if you are behind even the slightest terrain feature, you need to move.
· Antenna position is important, straight up and down is best, and it seems that standing actually helps, the higher the better.
· If you are in a car, even stopped (you guys did STOP right?), it's probably best to get out of it to transmit
· I was wrong about the radios, the $10 ones don't seem to work as well. You probably need to invest over $20.
· I have talked to the Teams on either side of us East to West (Carmel Valley and Scripps Ranch) and in those areas FRS is nearly useless except for close proximity work such as a search/rescue. They are going HAM. Expensive, but much, much better.
Upcoming Meetings—I was finally able to book the Senior Center for several of our meetings this year. Great people in that place, they are all-volunteer. I admit it's not on the top of my list, but I'm going to try to get the rest of the Year's Calendar for our Team finalized by the end of this month. Next week I intend to post a preliminary plan in this Update with dates, times, locations and tentative subject for your review and comments. Who knows, I might even get it posted on the CERT web site (Whoa, easy there Steve).
That's all for this week, questions, comments, you know how to find me.
-Steve
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