1) Monday, May 10th 6-6:30PM – NALCO (Northern ALameda COunty) ARES/RACES ‘training’ scheduled for fire patrol
Cedar street Alternate Emergency Operations Center (AEOC). For more information: http://www.pdarrl.org/ebsec/nalco/

(This meeting is specifically for city of Berkeley Fire Patrol training and is of only very limited value for other emergency events. Nevertheless, any/all training is valuable and NALCO is happy to accommodate anyone interested in participating.)

2) Thursday, May 27: 6pm – Discussion of emergency communication support using amateur radio: local procedures and protocols
508-20 Evans Hall (Seminar room of the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience)

This discussion is specially arranged for the campus community amateurs who wish to be involved in any local amateur radio emergency communication operations, including the UC Berkeley campus.

The discussion will include an introductory description of procedures, protocols, frequencies and facilities for local emergency communications including the UC Campus, Berkeley, Albany as well as Tang and Alta Bates/Herrick/Summit hospitals.

Note that this is just an *introduction* to help UC hams become familiar with what is available and how it all functions in this specific local environment. The information will be necessary and hopefully sufficient to permit active involvement in the amateur radio communicationportion of the UCB emergency exercise on June 17th.

The discussion will be led by Mal Raff who has participated in UCB emergency exercises for many years, including 2009. In addition, he has been involved in amateur emergency communication for over 40 years and in the Berkeley area for over 30 years, having been a founding member (and presently EC/RO) of NALCO (Northern ALameda COunty) ARES/RACES. He has been an active participant in W6BB activities since he was a grad student at UCB in the early 1970’s.

3) Thursday, June 17th, 2010: 8am-11.30am – Annual emergency exercise at UC Berkeley
Location and other details will be announced through the W6BB mailing list.

Members of W6BB are explicitly asked to participate in the event. If you are interested in participating actively in emergency communication, please attend one of the preparatory meetings. You can also participate as an observer which does not require any preparation.

Please forward this mail to any radio amateurs on campus who might not be on the W6BB mailing list. (To sign up for the W6BB mailing list go to http://www.w6bb.org/, click CONTACT and follow the instructions under “W6BB mailing list”)

For questions contact: Fritz, k6ee@arrl.net

Fritz, K6EE

Welcome Aboard Fred!!!

If you cannot make this meeting, and would like to be a candidate club officer (President, W6BB Trustee, Secretary), please send a bio/blurb about your ham ‘career’ to K6JEB or to the club list.

If you have agenda items, please send them to the list before the meeting.

OFFICIAL BUSINESS
Club Officer Elections – eligible members (you have to be a current student/staff/faculty to hold office in an OSL organization) will be tapped/elected, per our charter, for the next twelve months at our October meeting. THIS meeting we will have a chance to meet one another and anyone wishing to step-up or any nominations will be taken during the meeting tomorrow.

Club Program – until we have club officers elected, we won’t have a full meeting program hammered out. However, we have some prospects lined-up and we can discuss these and others during the meeting.

Shack Committee – the minute we get OSL recognition, we should start a search in earnest for an actual club Ham Shack. We already know of a few antennas up around campus, but we need leads on actual rooms where we can keep our equipment. As well, this (hopefully voluntary) committee should start discussing a workable policy with regard to recovering the equipment that might still be lingering for W6BB as well as laying out a plan to equip the shack. Remember, until we have an actual space, we won’t know whether we need things like chairs and desks and that sort of thing. We have already had a couple kind offers for equipment donations. The committee should be made aware of these and follow-up on the leads.

Club Dues – we shouldn’t collect any money until we have full OSL status. However, we should hammer-out and come to a CONSENSUS (for us country boys, that means when all the cows drink out of the same trough) on how much and for how long. Keep in mind if we had a few bucks, we could print up fliers and perhaps even subscribe to some of the ham radio magazines (or whatever the club decides to do with the money).

MEETING PROGRAM
NALCO ARES – Mal WA2UNP, will briefly discuss the W6BB relationship with NALCO (Northern Alameda County Amateur Radio Emergency Service). Part of our charter is to provide public service on campus as well as in the community during emergencies. NALCO membership is free to W6BB members.

This meeting will be mostly social and informal. Bring a pice of gear, or kit, or that old stack of QST, or even old W6BB trinkets or stories to share and amuse. And if you bring something to share/give away, you can take something. Future meetings might be spiced-up with a small raffle/drawing.