September President's Message
I hope all of you have had an enjoyable and relaxing summer. As you know I spend the first six weeks of the summer at Camp No-be-bo-sco as the Shooting Sports director. We had the largest attendance on record, 1,820 scouts. Steve kept me informed as to the status of BARA and I must say he did a great job in my absence. For this I will be eternally grateful. But now the summer is over and it is back to business as usual.
A few people need to be recognized at this time for their contributions on the summer events. I would like to begin by thanking Wendy for her efforts in organizing the bowling match between the Babes and men. I know the babes prevailed but I will always be ready for a re-match. And once again I would like to commend Heidi for the fantastic Field Day food and all of her hard work in organizing the BARA Picnic. I would also like to thank all who assisted in these two events.
The EC has made some of the final plans for the BARA Dinner and it will be another fantastic event. The date will be December 5th. The time will be 5:30 pm. The location will once again be Maggianos in Hackensack. We will be keeping the price the same at $25. It will once again be family style dinner with the menu being finalized at a later date. Bob will be taking your reservations starting from the time this message has been posted. Do not miss out on this great occasion.
September 11th-13th is the date for the September VHF QSO party. We will be setting up once again at the old Nike site in Orangeberg NY. I have seen the sign up list and I am quite pleased with the response. The EC did have a discussion about extending our operating hours until 11:00pm on Sunday. This is a practice that was done in the past. Extending the hours also led to much more impressive scores. The extended hours also alter the takedown procedures. Instead of Sunday afternoon it will have to be done on Monday morning. So far several people on the sign up list have committed to a Monday morning take down. In order for this to become a reality we will need more of you to volunteer. And of course we will welcome help from all of you for whatever time and effort you can give us.
Running concurrently with the contest will be the Annual Dumont Run. Steve will be heading up a group to provide communications during this event. It is for a worthwhile cause. Steve will be asking for volunteers at the meeting.
BARA has a very unique problem. We keep growing and our meeting place seems to shrink every month. Because of this, over the past few months we have been studying the possibility of moving our meeting location. Thanks to the efforts of Al Kundall and Jim Joyce we have been granted the use of the Washington Township Senior Center. For a point of reference it is walking distance from Westwood High School. There will be plenty of parking, the room is expansive. There are plenty of tables and chairs, and there is audio and video equipment available to us. We will not finalize this move until I have received an affirmative vote from the Club. If you are concerned about directions I will have Google Maps available. A Google Map will also be posted on the BARA web site.
That is all for now see you at the meeting, Sunday Sept 5, 2010 at the Red Cross building in Ridgewood.
73
Bruce WG2Y