Mira Mesa Newsletter

Good morning, here is the News: Volunteer Hours for April—Please send me any volunteer hours you logged in April by Noon tomorrow. Hours can include Team Meetings, Continuing Education classes, or any hours you spent on CERT activities (the bone marrow drive last Saturday counts as volunteer hours). Please let me know if you have any questions about reporting your hours. Scripps Ranch Fair—Scripps Ranch is having a Community Fair this Sunday, 6 May, 12:00-5:30pm: http://www.scrippsranch.org/events/community-fair.html The Scripps Ranch Team will have a booth at the event where they will do some interactive demonstrations, starting at 1:00pm. This sort of thing really needs a few CERT people to really work, as the booth has to be staffed while the demos are running. If you would like to see the Fair and can put in about 2 hours at the booth, please let me know by reply email, the Scripps guys would love to have you. Radio Drill 9 May— RSVP to me for this radio drill. I will take your RSVP up until 6:00 Tuesday night. You will get an email from me with your call sign. If you don't want to participate in the actual drill, but would like to observe, just show up at the rally point at 5:30pm. Here is the rest of the detail, borrowed largely from last year's drill: You will need an FRS radio for this drill, and something to write on/with. We will use Channel 7. Before the drill, please be sure your radio has a full charge and is tuned to Channel 7. If you bought two radios, and have not used FRS before, you might want to practice with someone else. There is a brief delay between keying the radio for transmission and actual transmission, so if you start talking immediately, you will get cutoff. This takes some getting used to. Promptly at 5:30, I will make the following announcement from the rally point (near the Recreation Center on New Salem, just east of Camino Ruiz): Attention. Attention. Attention. This is Mira Mesa net control, calling the Mira Mesa Community Emergency Response Team. This is a drill. This is a directed net. Please make no transmissions unless called upon by the net control station. Emergency traffic may break into this net at anytime and will be acknowledged by net control. I will ask for check-ins of CERT members by area. When you check in give your call sign, the street you are on and nearest cross street. Make a note of any check ins you hear from your location and bring your list to the team rally point. I will then ask for responses by quadrant as follows: Quadrant 1: North of Mira Mesa Blvd, East of Camino Ruiz Quadrant 2: North of Mira Mesa Blvd, West of Camino Ruiz Quadrant 3: South of Mira Mesa Blvd, East of Camino Ruiz Quadrant 4: South of Mira Mesa Blvd, West of Camino Ruiz I will acknowledge your transmission by call sign. Please make a note of all other call signs you hear from your location (but do not contact them). After you have made contact, proceed to the rally point. Keep your radio on, and report any "new" transmissions you heard on your way in until you get to the rally point. You can record them of course, but only if it is safe to do so (pull over or stop at a light). Do NOT, under any circumstances, operate your radio while driving. It may or may not be technically illegal, I don't really care. If you don't hear my announcement, but you hear someone else's response, you can request a relay from them. The transmission sequence is: "[call sign] to [call sign relay] request relay to net control" "[call sign relay] to [call sign] acknowledged" "[call sign relay] to [net control] I have contact with [call sign]" "[net control] acknowledged" If you can't hear my announcement, request only one relay, don't request a relay from everyone you can hear (but do record them). Do not communicate with another station unless you need to make a relay. If, after 5 minutes, you have not heard from anyone, drive half the distance to the rally point (or as far as makes sense to you), pull over and try again. You may need to get out of your car, FRS inside a vehicle can be iffy. When we all get to the rally point, we will plot locations on a map of Mira Mesa and see how we did. Usually coverage is pretty good, with a few holes we know about.