The May 7th 2018 and future club meetings will be held at the Parkview Baptist Church. 

Read on —

For the past year we have been guests of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. They have been very kind to us, and their facility was quite nice. However, the opportunity to move to a slightly larger facility presented itself, and the board decided to accept the generous offer of the Parkview Baptist Church to use their facilities for our club and board meetings.
So what will change? Not much. The location is about a thousand feet from the last meeting place.

Parking is more than adequate for our needs. The following aerial view shows the parking areas tinted in yellow green. Several places by the side entrance are handicap parking locations. If you can walk, or even if you just need the exercise, please use the Main parking lot across the street, and leave the few spots by the door for those less fortunate.

For those not familiar with the front of the church, the following image should refresh your memory.

If there are any questions, please contact one of the officers, Matthew, Bob, Patrick, or Bill.

Attendance was up this week. A big thank you to all who participated.

Once again LARC supported the March for Babies with both a donation and radio support.

Suited up and ready to walk!

The participants this year were left to right Debbie Leahy, Bob Doherty, Bill Aten, John Leahy, Kenny Kozla, Rich Kennedy, and Sam Shaver. Not shown, because he is taking the picture is Bill Johsnon.

This years event was well attended. According to one count there were just over 1,000 walkers. As in past years, Publix was well represented. Kenny Kozla, one of LARC’s own is a proud Publix employee.

Assembly before the start of the march. Over 1000 participated. Photo by Bob Doherty.

Fran and Jim Robinson with grandson Avery.

This year I had a bit of a surprise. While ‘on patrol’ I heard a voice call my name. Turned out to be my neighbor Fran and her husband Jim Robinson with their grandson Avery. Fran happens to be a employed by Publix as a writer. Jim is the Secretary Treasurer of our Home Owners Association.

The Citrus Tour May 5th and 6th 2018 The main speaker for this evening was Mike Breese, W2YS. Mike made a request for help with this event. Several positions need to be filled. Radio operators are required at each rest station. Operators with vehicles capable of transporting bike and biker are also needed. Finally, operators are needed at command center. Dinner will be held for participants. More information is available at http://www.citrustour.org. Our club contacts for this event are Bob Doherty, or for the skinny from the man who has done this the last ten years running, Larry Walker, KI4DNO. You an contact Larry at KI4DNO@aol.com. Darrell Davis KT4WX recently appointed Mike Bresse W2YS as an Assistant Section Manager for the Special Project of the Bike MS Citrus Tour. Bresse is the new amateur radio coordinator for the Bike MS Citrus Tour starting this year and had previously been the SAG vehicle coordinator for a number of years.

Mark your calendars for Friday May 11 for the 2018 Hurricane Awareness Tour to be held at the Lakeland Linder Regional Airport, 3900 Don Emerson Dr, lakeland, FL 33811. Admission is free.

Things To Do: 

• Tour Hurricane Hunter aircraft
• Meet the pilots & flight crew
• Speak with hurricane forecasters
• Meet with local National Weather Service meteorologists
• Walk through exhibits from various agencies & organizations
• Learn about weather safety & preparedness

For more information visit https://www.weather.gov/tbw/hat

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.