November 2006 Training & Events Schedule
 

Planned Training Sessions (Coming this Year)

Requested Training Sessions

If you would like to volunteer to run a training session, or if you have a training session request contact
Any Board Member or Don Johnson.
Italics = Sign-up required to attend this training

* See following notes:

To reserve use of squad ATV, contact Don Johnson at 928-474-5335
Jacket, gloves, boots, helmet, and eye protection required to operate Squad ATV

TAKE PRIDE

Take Pride Project in Pine and Strawberry has earned an "Environmental Leadership Award" from
the Governor's conference, sponsored by Az. Clean and Beautiful.

Ira Gibel and wife Roz  accepted the award, Oct. 30th in Scottsdale.

We received the award for our work in raising money for the Fuel Reduction Project spearheaded by Mike Brandt from the P/S F.D.    $90K was raised by contributions from full-time and part-time residents of Pine, Strawberry, and Payson.

    Ira Gibel 532

SAR info

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The Meaning of UTM 12S

What does the term UTM mean?

UTM is the acronym for Universal Transverse Mercator, a plane coordinate grid system named for the map projection on which it is based (Transverse Mercator).

What is a Zone?

The UTM system consists of 60 zones, each 6-degrees of longitude in width.  The zones are numbered 1-60, beginning at 180-degrees longitude and increasing to the east.  The UTM zones are numbered at the top of the below chart.  Our zone is 12.

What do the leading numbers and letters mean on my GPS UTM coordinate display (e.g. 12S)?

The number refers to the UTM zone as described above; the letter refers to an 8-degree band of latitude within the specific UTM zone.  The southernmost band from 80 degrees South to 72 degrees South is letter "C".  The letters increment to the North ending in "X" which is a 12 degree band from 72 degrees North to 84 degrees North.  The system skips certain letters that may be confused with numbers, e.g. the letters “O” and “I” are not used.  Our band is S.

Contributed by Kathy Baas 558

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Break Away Games Comes Out With "Incident Commander" Simulation Game

"Incident Commander," a new game from Break Away Games, makers of the computer game Civilization.  Break Away Games' "federal division" states, "Incident Commander teaches NIMS compliant incident management for multiple scenarios including terrorist attacks, school shootings, and natural disasters."  There is a website for the game and the company is offering it for free to all authorized public safety agencies.

http://www.incidentcommander.net

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Petzel America Recalls Carabiners 

Petzl America is recalling certain BALL-LOCK carabiners due to a quality issue with a limited number of the M34 BL Am'D BALL-LOCK and M36 BL WILLIAM BALL-LOCK carabiners with the new metal locking sleeve. The sleeve may be unlocked without pressing the green button, so the locking system acts as a TWIST-LOCK, instead of a BALL-LOCK.

http://en.petzl.com/petzl/SportNews?News=160

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Computer Tips, Techniques, Rants, Raves, and Netiquette
submitted by Jack Quinn and Les Hulse

After last months thunderstorms article we’ll continue with power outages and what you can do to protect your data.

Scenario #1 – You are working on an important document, online banking, writing a long letter to your favorite grandchild or downloading a great joke from your buddy. Suddenly the power goes out! Goodbye to whatever you were working on or downloading.

Scenario #2 – Same as above except all your computer equipment is plugged into a UPS. Suddenly the power goes out! All your computer equipment keeps working just like it did before the power went out. You then can finish whatever you were doing and then shut down your computer.

UPS units will keeps things going  for 5, 10, 20 minutes depending on which unit you have.

What is UPS?

 A UPS is an Uninterruptible Power Supply (battery backup). Plugged into a wall outlet, a UPS protects the digital equipment connected to it from power problems - voltage variations such as surges, spikes, brownouts, and outages.
 

How does a UPS prevent data loss?

Basically, the UPS becomes the direct power source for the equipment that's plugged into it. So if power drops, dips or surges, the equipment will not experience this, since it's drawing its power from the UPS battery.

A UPS is inserted between the source of power (typically commercial utility power) and the load it is protecting. When a power failure or abnormality occurs, the UPS will effectively switch from utility power to its own power source almost instantaneously.

UPS comes in many sizes and prices.
 

Here are two that are available at Costco – online.

Question: Do any of you find this section useful?

We can rant and rave about many topics, but do not know if it is appreciated. Also, we will most likely choose topics that “tick us off” and ignore the ones that you may be interested in. We can give you our opinion on just about anything (opinions are cheap).

 So let us know if this section is useful, and if you would like us to tear into some topic, just tell us.

 Send any comments and/or suggestions to the editor; Mike – address at bottom of newsletter.

Commander’s Corner
 

OneCallNow is not broken – just another slow month for missions.  I appreciate all those who showed up at Tonto Natural Bridge for the carryout on Sunday, Oct 22.  We had a great turnout and very good response time that made short work of the trip up the trail.  OneCallNow did contact me to let me know they believe the time zone issues have been resolved with their system.  I’m sure we’ll get to test it sooner than later.

It won’t stay slow forever, and winter is coming on fast, so you should be fully switched over and prepared for a winter mission by now.

Just a reminder for some upcoming events:

–        Project Lifesaver training is the first weekend of November (4^th and 5^th), at the squad building. 

–        Rope certification training will take place the following two weekends (Nov 11^th, 12^th and Nov 18^th, 19^th).  This is a joint training with Diamond-Star fire department. 

–        Sgt Hudgens is working on a joint training exercise with some of the South County SAR personnel that will be held near Young on November 11^th.  If you are interested in participating in this, contact DJ, Dave Pirtle, JJ, or myself for details.

For those who haven’t been by the squad building lately, someone managed to take out quite a few feet of our fence.  Roger has estimated it at just about the cost of our insurance deductible, so we will probably fix it ourselves.  If we can get the materials for it in time, we may get most of it done after the Project Lifesaver classes this weekend.

Elections are coming up.  The election committee has several great candidates lined up for the various open slots.  If you are interested in running, please contact Les Conner who is doing his usual great job running this committee.

Stay safe and stay ready.

Bill Pitterle - 500

Don’t forget; the meetings this month are November 7^th for the Board and November 9^th for the General Meeting.

Website

Tonto Rim SAR Members can now have your very own email address through our site. Just contact our Webmaster at jack@jackswebs.com  to arrange for it, no cost to you or us.

We are promoted and you’ll also find our newsletter on the  Rim Country Volunteer site;

http://www.inpayson.com/TRSAR-Payson-Rim-Country-Area.htm

Thanks to those who contributed to this issue of the newsletter.  

Mike 502  editor@trsar.org