Greetings, fellow hams (and soon-to-be-hams.)

After careful consideration, taking into account the number of our members who are in the target demographic for a dangerous infection from COVID-19, plus the fact that PC-EMA is using the building as an EOC for response coordination, I am making the call to cancel the in-person meeting for April 3rd. Our Zoom presentation from Neil Rapp, WB9VPG will be rescheduled for later.

However, that doesn’t mean that we can’t still meet. Let’s all actually USE AMATEUR RADIO!! I know, a pretty crazy concept.

I propose that anyone who wants to get on the club’s repeater on 146.775 (131.8 tone) at 7PM (or any time – feel free to just start chatting.) I’ll start “the meeting” when I get on (I start working from home this Monday for an unspecified time — I may still be there on the 3rd.) If you aren’t a ham yet, but have the ability to listen, you’re welcome as well.

Think of questions and things to talk about. We have this repeater and we’re feeding it electrons – let’s let some of them fly out into the air.

As of now, our May meeting will still be held at the EMA building, with a planned presentation topic of “Ask the experts” with a panel of folks who have the experience and knowledge to answer your radio/electronics questions. It’ll be an Elmering session.

Thanks for understanding. These are weird times indeed – all of the restaurants and theatres are closed, concert tours being cancelled, my train ride in this morning was just me in the tail-end car until East Chicago when 5 other people got on. We’ll all get through this, and if we use common sense, we’ll all be safe.

Paul Braun WD9GCO
President, PCARC