Milestone SEKARC Meeting Sept 27th

The September 27th meeting of the SEKARC will be held at the Pittsburg Fire Station #1 on West Fourth Street in Pittsburg at 9am! We are very excited about the news and this will be our first actual meeting room, and we will even have a program with a special guest presenter!

Jim Tuggle, the Kansas State RACES officer will be providing the program for us and will be giving a presentation on the RACES program. For those of you that are unfamiliar with the program here is a little rundown taken from the RACES website.

RACES stands for "Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service," a protocol created by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC Part 97, Section 407). Many government agencies across the country train their Auxiliary Communications Service (ACS) volunteers using the RACES protocol. The volunteers serve their respective jurisdictions pursuant to guidelines and mandates established by local emergency management officials.

Click to go to RACES.org

We have met with the Fire Chief Mike Simons and our plan is to make this a regular location for our monthly meetings. At each monthly meeting we will reserve and confirm the room for the following month. The station has a great training room with lots of space as it holds 80, and it also has the latest media technology which the Chief offered for us to use. Large screen with projector, laptop and Internet access. I think this will be a great partnership going forward. 

With the large room, tables and technology all we will need to provide is the donuts and coffee! This had great possibilities for the club for bringing in guest speakers, demonstrations and we could even have kit or antenna building meetings so if you have an idea for a meeting topic then speak up and let us know! There is parking in the front on the left and in the rear of the building and on 3rd street if we need it! Just don't park on the approach and block the trucks!

One other option is to use the lot to the East of the station to setup radio gear right there on sight. Imagine having something like this for the community to see and we could even offer a Get On The Air station or GOTA for anyone interested to make some radio contacts! This opens up many possibilities for SEKARC so the club can make the next steps as we grow!

Thanks and mark your calendars for Sept 27th 9-11 am! See you there!