The weather has been great, and I can see why many of us may not want to be indoors on such beautiful nights, but even if you don’t have the time to spend listening to the entire net, you can always check in as a short timer and then be on your way. Of course, you are always welcome to hang around and listen. You never know what might come up.

The following were on the net this Thursday. I have included as an experiment the distance each person lives from our repeater. Yes, that 49 mile contact was from Hudson FL. Mack reached us with a Yagi mounted on a 47 foot tower. His signal was full quieting.
 

Some interesting stats about the Blog

So who is looking at our blog? You don’t suppose there is a Putin connection here, do you? 🙂

The average is computed by adding up all the values in a set and then dividing the total by the number of values. Aside from the definition, the word average is has other connotations. We say that he has average looks, or he is an average athlete. Well, I wondered where the average club member lives. So, for all club members with a Florida address, excluding those who have a PO Box, I looked up their Latitude and Longitude. Calculated the average. Then, I searched Google Maps for the average latitude and longitude of LARC club members. The result was interesting.

The average LARC member lives in Lake Parker! How should we interpret this? Does this suggest that as far a housing goes, the average member is underwater? That sounds a bit fishy. Perhaps there is something mystical about this location? Like the Bermuda Triangle, with Comradary, Training, and Service all coming together. Might there be some strange power drawing us to this site?

Averages have their place and are useful, but shouldn’t be taken too literally. If you are told that the average family has two and a third children, you are not bothered by the fact that you have never seen a third of child, or for that matter, question which two thirds are missing. Yet it somehow seems fitting that on average  member of the Lakeland Amateur Radio Club lives in a lake. 🙂

This originally came from Mike Oliver. Please, if you have not already done so, visit the listserver-jolly.dreamhost site and sign up. The procedure is quite simple. After you have done this you will begin to receive the kind of group mail you were used to getting from Yahoo groups. You will also be able to send group mail.

Due to the plethora of problems experienced in recent months with the Yahoo groups infrastructure, a mailing list has been setup to facilitate the LARC membership communication which will replace this Yahoo group in the coming months. It is highly recommended that you visit this page to subscribe:

http://listserver-jolly.dreamhost.com/listinfo.cgi/cq-lakelandarc.org

All of the information about the list is on that page, including the new email address to which you’ll send messages to reach the other list members <cq@lists.lakelandarc.org>. Please take a few minutes today and subscribe to this list.

After clicking on Frequency Database you will be presented with a map of the United States. 

For this example, click on Florida, and then on Polk County. 

Next click on Amateur Radio on the second level menu. This will present you with a list of all 

the repeaters in Polk County.  

If you scroll to the bottom of the page you will find a list of all the zip codes in Polk County. Clicking on any one zip code will display a list of all hams in your zip. 

Now, for the option I said I would get back to, namely Amateur Radio, which we first encountered under All Databases on the main menu. Selecting Amateur Radio will allow you to look up any ham by call sign or last name. Like QRZ, registration is required for more detail.

I hope you have found this helpful. And, if you get the chance, please thank George Mann for pointing this site out to me. 

73 Bill

Services for Jeff Goldensoph K4JEW
This Friday 6 pm at Hodges Family Funeral Home11441 us 301 Dade City , Fl 33525
After services there will be a small gathering at his sister’s House on Beth Road just north of the funeral home.

Location

Congratulations are in order.

Eric Allen, KE4ECCholding his certificate for passing the Tech exam.

The background was chosen because our meeting was held the day after Easter.

Next to Peggy Craig Curry, WB3IEX new General, and to his left Joe Hansel KN4KIB a new Tech.

 In the background is the famous Rochester Mushroom House designed by architect James Johnson, who is also the architect of Rochester’s Liberty Pole, sometimes know as the stainless steel toothpick. 🙂

Opening Remarks and Upcoming Programs

 For those who are not aware, Bob is the mastermind behind the monthly programs. He works tirelessly behind the scenes to make sure that the club is treated to an appropriate and interesting program each month.

Proposal For Training

 During the meeting, Todd made the case for a club sponsored educational program. This will consist of a two day crash course aimed at passing the Technician License Test. This may seem like a stretch but the latest cognitive science suggests that the mind is pretty good at filing; retrieval is another story. However, in many studies, participants shown a hundred faces were able to correctly identify a face shown from a comparison face not shown a surprisingly high number of times. Todd’s suggestion of drilling only on only the right answers to questions is similar to the face experiments mentioned above. Faced with the comparison of something you have seen with something you have not seen, your mind is likely to gravitate toward what it was exposed to. Is this in-depth learning? Definitely not! On the other hand, as one ham in the audience put it, a license is a license to learn. If two days after you pass the test you can’t recall the starting and ending frequencies of the two meter band, there is always Google.

Todd correctly pointed out that this must be a club effort. Students must associate club members with ham radio if LARC is going to gain any new members from this effort. In many cases, just your presence will be enough. More information will follow.

In the future a General course will be addressed, but unlike the Tech course, this one will focus more on understanding and take considerably more than a weekend.

Education is one of the three pillars LARC stands on. Judging from the hands showing interest, our club is behind this venture. Now we just need candidates.

Florida Parks On The Air

Matthew did a great job covering Florida Parks On the Air, Year Two. During his presentation he displayed some of the equipment he takes with him, including antennas, power supplies, and radios. You can find more about Florida Parks On The Air by visiting our website at LARC Website

 Another Packed House

It is gratifying to see the crowd show for a meeting, and even more gratifying to realize that things just don’t happen by accident. Coffee is brewing an hour in advance, chairs are set up for the presentation, and our VE group is testing in the room behind the meeting room. All this happens seamlessly because Sam, Rich, Peggy and many others all pitch in to make it so. They say in the military the first rule is “never volunteer.” But consider this. If everyone followed this rule, we would have no military. LARC works because its members pitch in to make it work.

Who doesn’t like a picnic? For LARC members it is not just the food but also the comaradary, and of course, radio.

For more images, please click here