Blackberry REACT March Newsletter

Quick Clicks

Thinking outside the box Although we in REACT are not in the military, much of what we do exposes us to some similar situations. Here: http://kitup.military.com/ is a site aimed at soldiers to share ideas about gear that is useful in what is euphemistically referred to as "the field." On the day of my visit, recommended gear included a heater for personal heat as well as boiling water and cooking grub; ThermaCare heat wraps (I carry those); self-sealing baggies to keep gear dry; a strobe lite in case you get lost; and more. Categories include health and comfort, safety, morale, and more.

For other resources which some of us may not think of (help for shipwrecked sailors, for instance), drop by http://www.bloglines.com/blog/CivilizedExplorer for hints on survival biscuits, water filtration, and the like. If we do have a major earthquake in the Bay Area, we should have some ideas for long-term survival in place on the assumption that major metropolitan areas will get more first responders than we will on the peninsula and that we won't get food, water, shelter, or help for a long time.

Luncheon is served
Pearl River has a line of lunch pails. Some of us may have read of lunch pails and lunch buckets; many of us have had lunch boxes. http://www.pearlriver.com/v2/FramesCat.asp?iGroup=333 has stainless steel pails, boxes, and buckets, many with folding handles so you can use them over your cookstove. Most lunch box gear these days is plastic so you can microwave the contents to heat up your lunch, but after the Big One, microwaves may be a fading memory you talk about over your hobo fire in the middle of some parking lot in Oakland.

Pearl River also offers Melamine lunch boxes in a plethora of colors, thermal lunch boxes, paper take-out boxes, and bamboo containers, some of which are out of stock on the day of my visit. Sizes range from pretty big to pretty small. Just because it's survival doesn't mean it can't be pretty.

Tip o' the day
There's no bad weather, only bad clothes.

Events

Ross Peterson is again offering his one-day ham class. The next one is on Saturday, April 28, 2007, in South San Francisco. Drop by http://www.baears.com/ for registration and address. Since Morse code is no longer required for the General or Extra license, please study up and upgrade your license.

The Brag Fair will be on Thursday, April 19 (a Thursday) from 11:30 am to 1:00 pm.

The Mountain View Parade is Saturday, April 28 from 10:00 am to 1:30 pm.

Updates

The April meeting will have Bruno Ender, VP for Power-Sonic http://www.power-sonic.com/index.php as speaker. His topic is batteries and charging issues.

In May, Chief Frank Fraone of the Menlo Park Fire Department will talk about Communications with the Community.

Howard Zolty is doing an incredible job finding sources and applying for grants. Jon Mosby and he are cranking out grant applications like crazy, and we passed a resolution expressing the appreciation of Blackberry REACT for their ongoing work.

I'm sending this out as a plain text email. I will also provide our Webmaster with a marked up copy as HTML to post on the site so you can read the archives of the newsletter and the months and years go buy. The plain text may not have clickable links (it depends on your email application), so you can copy and paste URLs into your browser. The copy on the Web site will be marked up with links for your clicking pleasure.