It’s that time of year again! Antenna season is almost upon us. I hope everyone had a fun and enjoyable summer! Whether it was spent playing radio at any number of the events that CARA proudly supported, sitting beside a blazing fire while out camping, or sitting quietly with your fur babies on the back porch with an HT in your hand waiting to chat with whoever came on the air while you were there.
I am Chaos, but you can call me VE6KOS. My name is Brett, and I have recently stepped up to fill the position of President at CARA. Harry VE6HRY decided to step down a few months ago and passed the torch along to me. Thanks Harry, for your time, effort, and commitment to the club. Everyone appreciates everything you have done during your tenure.
My vision for CARA moving forward is simple. I would like to see it once again become the active organization that it is capable of being. It is my hope that by everyone working together, enhancing our communications, and following through with planned events that every member will enjoy all that CARA has to give.
What do you think CARA is? Or what would you like to see it become? What is your vision for the club?
Please let me know. This is your club as much as mine. By working together we can push forward to forge it into what everyone wants it to be and more. “Many Hams make light work”. Since I have been a member, I have repeatedly been listening to two things: 1. As a communications club, we suck at it. 2. Covid messed up everything and nothing has been the same since.
We can fix the communication problem. It simply requires communicating. For those of you that know me, ya’ll know shutting me up is the hard part and those of you that I have not had the pleasure of meeting will figure it out quickly. I promise.
It appears that we are starting to move past Covid. People are easing back into being comfortable with coming out and sitting in the same room together! This is great! One shining example of this is our recent Meshtastic seminars. As many of you are aware there is a huge interest in Meshtastic in the club, so we had a meeting about it! It was short notice. I broke all the rules that I want to see followed going forward. With only a weeks notice we put 23 people in a room. Who’s the Keynote Speaker I was asked? Don’t have one was my response. My plan was to cram a bunch of people who were interested in a topic into a room and talk about it!
And we did! It was great! Everyone had a blast! Then we did again! The second one saw attendance of 43 people! People came together and did what Hams do. We got excited about something we were interested in and we sat down and talked about it! The energy in the room for these seminars was nothing short of electrifying!
We need to organize, communicate, and follow through on what we plan. Cancelling things will become a “once in a blue moon” occurrence, not a 90% probability of it happening for every event. Things will be posted in the events calendar on www.caraham.org and one monthly email will go out to everyone listing every upcoming event. This will give people that need time to plan the opportunity to do so, while still giving those who do last minute a last minute reminder!
In closing I would like to remind everyone that the Annual General Meeting and Executive Elections will be Saturday, October 17th. Remember “Many Hams make light work”! Please think of how you can help push this initiative forward. It does not matter whether it’s a big help or a little help. It’s all help! I look forward to seeing you there and working together with everyone to make CARA what we want it to be!
If you have an idea, a thought, a suggestion or just want to say hi….. ve6kos@caraham.org will get you there!
73,
Brett Auger, VE6KOS
