Welcome to Handiham World!
The move, part 2
Image: Avery's old office area showing one of our five big file cabinets that still needs to be moved.
We continue this week with our office move, this time moving Nancy's office and the file cabinets. This is a big part of the move, and will likely cause some disruption in our regular work schedule. We ask for your patience, as phone calls and emails may take a bit longer to answer. I am still working on a solution for our telephone system, but for now all of my phone calls go directly to voice mail. As calls come in, I am notified of messages left on voice mail through an email message, so that I am able to return calls fairly quickly. Nancy is in the office today, but is using a cubicle in the hallway.
The movers will pick up the file cabinets and some other equipment on Thursday, November 12. Nancy plans to be in the office that day to make sure that all of the files and equipment are accounted for, while I will be waiting at Camp Courage to meet the movers and direct the placement of the five large horizontal file cabinets and the other furniture and equipment in our new office. Depending on my schedule for that day, I do still plan to check in to the regional PICONET on 3.925 MHz at 09:00 CST and the Handiham Echolink net at 11:00 CST. We still need to upgrade the antenna systems, so I will be limited to checking in to one or both nets via the Internet. I will try to contact Lyle, K0LR, our volunteer who maintains the Handiham Remote Base, when he runs the PICONET as the regular Thursday morning net control station.
We are still looking at more moving in the near future, too. Because we will be out at Camp Courage, we have decided that it is best to move our equipment storage and test gear out to camp. This means that the Handiham repair shop at Courage Center will close and make the move, though not immediately. I will enlist the help of some volunteers to make sure that the equipment is moved properly. While this decision means more work in the short term, I think we will benefit by having everything right where we need it. It does present a problem when people bring donations of radio gear to the Courage Center, but we think we can simply have the gear set aside for pick up and transport to Camp Courage as needed. We do plan to continue the equipment loan program when we get organized again, with donated gear first being distributed to our campers who need stations and accessories at the upcoming Handiham Radio Camp in late May, 2010.
Since our shop volunteers were all from the Twin Cities area, we will be on the lookout for hams who live close to our new location and who want to volunteer to check out donated ham radio equipment before it is distributed to our members. It should be noted that we do not repair the equipment anymore, as we did years ago. We check it to make sure that it is in working condition. Only the most minor repairs are possible these days, because the equipment is full of surface-mount devices and repairs are generally done by a well-equipped commercial repair facility that has access to modern instruments and a stock of replacement circuit boards. The old method of using basic test gear to track down faults to the component level is just not practical with the newer equipment.
So there is a lot to work out. We are making great progress, but there is more to do. We are rolling up our sleeves and getting right to work!
For Handiham World, I'm...
Patrick Tice, wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager
