The meeting began promptly at 0830 and ended at 1000. Three main topics were discussed:

• CERT:
  • Emergency Prep Fair to take place on 2/25 at both King’s Point (KP) and Sun City Center (SCC).
  • Some feel CERT needs more/better:  training, recruitment, meeting location convenience, and our club role defined. We need to define our involvement with CERT and other organizations with respect to emergency communications.
  • Need club members to review the original scope of the EPC relative to CERT/EOC (refresh on the documents on the KPARC website before the next meeting).
  • Should we proceed with Hud/KM4DDD Emergency Power Exercise schedule?  If so, the first milestone is the 1st Saturday in April, with a power-up exercise in June.
  • Next EPC meeting should review the Emergency power exercise plan.
• FRS:
  • Dick Bishop/W4NWD provided a summary of the results of the experiment with maps and coverage plots.  Did it work?  Yes. There was a lot of discussion on the pros and cons of operation. The community-at-large (KP, SCC, and Valencia) can likely be well-covered by 4 or 5 well-placed GMRS stations.  Bottom line is that Dick has generated a draft summary that should form the basis for defining the KPARC community support policy.  This is still being fine-tuned but will be the main message delivered on 2/25 at the Disaster Preparedness Meeting.
  • Dick/W4NWD recounted the essence of our meeting with Mike Bardell. KPARC is going to be offered the opportunity to make a 5-minute presentation to an estimated audience of 1000 at the DP Meeting on 2/25.
  • One presentation idea floated was to include a 30-second demo of the radios (the person on stage and, perhaps one or two in the audience/elsewhere to simulate a short emergency call).  At least, it’s not all vue graphs.
  • Joe Flack/W0QF and Dick Bishop/W4NWD will be the lead for the 2/25 event.
  • This and other FRS tests should also be seen as opportunities to invite non-licensed participants to be trained for a ham license or, at least, obtain a GMRS license.
• SARnet:
  • Bill Miller/N1CDO displayed a nice map showing the 35 +/- repeaters that form SARnet.  Of interest to the KPARC EPC, Eric/WA4EMN noted that SARnet would become a controlled net during emergencies and not be available for routine ham radio use.
• Miscellaneous:
  • KPARC may wish to consider having a Lexan-like panel for covering the exposed club windows for extra durability during high-wind events until KP replaces the windows with Hurricane windows.

Respectfully submitted,
Keith/KI5US