Busy June
Well, June is usually busy, this month seems especially so. My calendar is practically full and the month is barely started.
Tonight, of course, is the Docs team meeting. Tomorrow night is Radio Club. Usually Radio Club is preceded by a RACES meeting which means an early, and rushed dinner. This month, however, we are spared the RACES meeting since the EC is out of town. I missed the PRB-1 team meeting last night, totally got by me.
Saturday is the Dow Run. As usual, I'll be logging, which means I pick up the net control at around 6 AM and head for the event. We will be hanging out in the county's emergency command vehicle from which we run the event. Sometime in there I need to prepare spreadsheets and annotated maps so we know what we're doing.
The following Saturday we are moving packet operations from this and surrounding counties. That means I need to get on the stick and get some sort of link set up to an adjoining county that isn't moving. I probably should be spreading the word to northern Michigan as well. A lot of folks up there rely on our high profile digi which has been on the same frequency for probably a decade.
On the 18th another PRB-1 meeting. I need to set up a more assertive alarm for that or something. Although being on a Thursday I probably won't get caught off guard quite as badly as Tuesday when things are a little strange around here.
That weekend promises to be interesting, and busy. Saturday is the Midland Hamfest, and we will probably set up for that Friday night. Since it is at a new venue, there are bound to be all sorts of unpleasant surprises. I'm being lobbied to do a forum on HF digital for the hamfest, so I may need to do some prep. After the hamfest, the wife and I will head over to Saginaw for their Greek festival. Have to get our annual dose of souvlaki and dolmathes.
Sunday we are going over to my daughter's for dinner. It's her birthday and still no clue what we are going to get her.
Then on Monday I get on the big bird with my son to head for FUDcon.
It would be nice to get something going at FUDcon around some of my questions for F12, but I don't see finding the time to prep for that.
Of course, this doesn't cover all the in-between stuff that needs to be handled. Every month before the 15th I need to send a report to headquarters and the Michigan State Police. One of the districts is testing a new way of collecting the data, and I would like to get that spread out to the rest of the state for the following month's reports. That is going to take grokking a bunch of PHP, tho.
I'm also going to need to round up net controls for those times when I am gone. I normally NCS QMN every Friday night, and since I'll be in Germany on the 26th that ain't gonna happen, and on the 19th I'm likely to be tied up getting ready for the swap. I often have to take net control for the ARPSC net on Sundays as well. There is a schedule of which districts take which Sunday, but as often as not they don't show up. I'll need to lean on the DECs for those scheduled for the 28th and also probably the 21st to make sure somebody shows.
Between all this I have two dozen agencies I need to contact for our PRB-1 efforts. Although the conversations shouldn't be that long, I'm sure I'll spend plenty of time chasing folks down.
I'm still trying to get Lesson 21 of the Elmer 160 course out the door, and Craig would really like me to do a new Lesson 10 reflecting the new PIC-EL III.
June is usually a bad month weather wise, too. This means lots of interruptions for SKYWARN nets, and quite possibly some trips to nearby counties to help with damage assessment and/or recovery. Let's keep our fingers crossed for a quiet June. Last year we got hit really hard, so maybe we got this year's quota over with. Wishful thinking.
And on top of it all, I think my printer just died. Ahh the leisurely life of a retiree!