SAR COORDINATES

April 2007

TONTO RIM SEARCH AND RESCUE SQUAD, Inc.

P.O. BOX 357
STRAWBERRY AZ 85544

A self-supporting, not-for-profit group of volunteer citizens dedicated to improving safety in the Arizona wilderness.

Operating under the authority of the Gila County Sheriff's Office

John Armer; Sheriff

TRSAR Squad meets monthly

General Public Welcome
2nd Thursday @ 7:00 - 9:00 PM
Payson Public Library Meeting Room
328 N. McLane Road - Payson, Arizona

Comments From the Board 

Don’t forget; the meetings this month are April 10th for the Board and April 12th for the General Meeting.

SAR activity is picking up, as it normally does this time of year.  Stay prepared.

Thanks for the quick response to the Tonto Natural Bridge rescue this month.

Fundraising is a big part of what we do – it pays for the expensive items we require for doing our job – vehicles, buildings, rope equipment, rescue equipment, medical equipment, insurance, etc.  We have a good slate of fundraising activities mapped out for the year, starting with the business showcase on April 14^th.  As always, your assistance in these activities is greatly appreciated.

Our ongoing job is to continue to improve our responsiveness – primarily to the subjects of our missions, but also to the Sheriff’s office, and to medical first responders on scene.  We should always assess ourselves after missions to see if improvements could be made, and the board always welcomes suggestions for improvements.  The last couple of missions to Tonto Natural Bridge illustrated how our job differs from, for example, the fire department who typically responds to medical distress issues.  Our expertise is in wilderness and remote rescue.  Because of that, we should think of some of the basic things that might be required in a remote medical emergency – such as blankets.  Fire department personnel typically are only a few steps away from their support vehicle, so they may not think of some of the basics that may be necessary when they are 30-40 minutes away from their support vehicle. 

Bill Pitterle – Commander, #500

April 2007 Training & Events Schedule

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14-15 April (Sat-Sun)   SAR Academy – This is a mandatory classes for the ones who haven’t taken it – any member can also take it again – Place: Squad building – Time: 0800-1600

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21 April (Sat)  Rope Training – Time: 0800 – Place: Box Canyon – Roger Miotto and rope instructors in charge

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 25 April (Wed.)   CPR -  Time: 1800 – Place: Ira Gibel house

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Planned Training Sessions

 (Coming this Year)

Planned           Navigation Training – Compass and GPS

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Planned         June 20 and August 15,  First Aid: May 16, First Responder: July 18 

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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

Question for the Month: How much water should you carry with you ? 

Enough for the days that you are going to be out and for one extra day.

Squad Web Site:  www.trsar.org

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Computer Tips, Techniques, Rants, Raves, and Netiquette

submitted by Jack Quinn and Les Hulse

Is Your Computer Running? Then Go Catch It!

This month we present for your enjoyment a short collection of techniques gathered through the years of wrestling with computers.

Cool Wheel Mouse Trick

If you have a mouse with a scroll wheel on it, you can do some cool tricks...

1 - Shift & Spin

Ever wonder what happens when you hold down the Shift key on a web page and spin the wheel on your wheel mouse? Explorer goes either back or forward, depending on which direction you spin.

Give it a try. Open up Explorer and follow a few links. Then, hold down your SHIFT key and spin that wheel.

2 - CTRL & Spin

If you are in a web browser (Explorer, Firefox, or Netscape) or reading an email in Outlook Express, hold down your Ctrl key and spin the wheel. It makes the text larger or smaller depending on which way you spin. For Opera users, it magnifies both the images and the text.

Not only does this spinning technique save lots of time, but it has the added bonus of impressing the heck out of any novice computer users in the area during said spin.

Launching Multiple Programs

Have you ever needed to launch multiple programs? Normally, you hit the Start button, Programs, then select the program you want to run. Once that one starts, you go back through and repeat the process for the next program. Well, here's a better way.

Next time you need to launch more than one program from your Programs menu, hold down your SHIFT key while you click the program's icon. The application will launch, but you won't lose the Programs menu and have to start all over.

Web pages with fonts that are too small to read or so large that they waste browser space

You can avoid eye strain or the loss of vast amounts of browser real estate. If you're using Explorer, Firefox, or Netscape you can increase / decrease the font size of your browser. Here's how:

Explorer or Firefox Users:

   Click your View menu, Text Size, and select the size you want to view your web pages at.

Netscape Users:

   Click the View menu and select either "Increase Font" or "Decrease Font"

One quick note:  Keep in mind that when the people who designed the page you're looking at set it up, they may have designated a specific text size that you're overriding. So, if a page looks bad at one of your "custom" text sizes, you know why!

Bonus - If you have a wheel mouse, hold down the CTRL key and spin your wheel to increase / decrease size.

Instant Properties

Here's a quick way to view the properties of a file or program.

If you need to get the properties for something (like an icon, for instance), just hold down your ALT key and double-click it. Instant properties!

Try it with "My Computer" or one of your regular desktop icons.

And yes, I know that you can also right-click an item and select Properties from the resulting menu. I just thought this was cooler.

Rename a file

There are four ways to rename a file...

1. You could click the file name once to highlight, click a second time to make it available to change, then type in the new file name.

2. Right click the file and choose "Rename". This will highlight the file name allowing you to type in a new one.

3. Hold down the Alt key and double click the file to open the Properties box. Type the new name in the name box.

4. The easiest way is to simply click the file and hit F2.

Purge Your Clipboard of Large Files

 When you use the "copy" or "cut" command, it copies information to your Windows clipboard. That information is kept in your RAM memory until it's replaced by something else.

 Unfortunately, if you're copying large items, this can adversely affect your computer's performance. How? Well, that large file, picture, object, or whatever it was that you copied is floating around in your RAM, regardless of whether it's been pasted or not.

 For example, let's say I have 32 meg of free RAM. I copy a 10 meg file to my clipboard. Now, that file will continue to occupy 10 meg of RAM until something else is placed on the clipboard, the clipboard is purged, or I restart my computer.

 So what can you do?

 The simplest thing would be to just copy something small to your clipboard. Maybe copy a blank space in a word processor to your clipboard or possibly a short sentence. Anything small is fine. Since your clipboard can only hold one item at a time, the old 10 meg file is replaced with the new small file.

 You could also open the Clipboard Viewer, hit the Edit menu, then Delete. This will quickly purge the clipboard contents.

 You can get to the clipboard viewer by clicking Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools. It should be under there if it's installed (it's not always installed).

Undo Tricks

If you use computers a lot, you probably find yourself out in the real world wishing you had an Undo command (you know, like just before you're about to smash your new car). Well, the "universal" undo shortcut is: Ctrl+Z.

Ctrl+Z is normally used in word processing documents, but it also works just about anywhere in windows. Let's say you accidentally drag an icon to your desktop and really wish you had it to do over. Well, hit Ctrl+Z and the icon vacates your desktop and jumps back to wherever it was before.

It works with Windows Explorer too. Let's say you accidentally delete a file. Instead of going to the recycle bin to recover it, hit Ctrl+Z.

Note that this only works if you are sending the file to the recycle bin. If you hold down the Shift key while you delete thus bypassing the recycle bin, the file is gone for good. All the Ctrl+Z ing in the world won't help.

In most programs, Ctrl+Z will undo whatever it was that you just did. Bad thing is that many programs only give you one or two of these "undos." Then you're stuck—or are you?

One clever way to make sure you can always go back is to save your file frequently (a simple Ctrl+S will do it)—especially if you're about to make some big changes. Then if you really mess up good, just close the file and DON'T SAVE IT.

When you open it back up, you'll be back to the way it was when you last saved. This is really handy if you're playing around with image manipulation and are "testing" different effects.

If you want to take this to the next level, you may want to save your file under a different name each time. After all, when it comes to computers, you just can't be too paranoid.

I know, this all may seem incredibly obvious, but I can't tell you the number of times I've seen people waste half an hour trying to get a document back to the way it was originally when they could have just used this tip.

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 webmaster; Jack.

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.

You’ll also find our newsletter on the

Rim Country Volunteer site;

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

Related SAR info

Trekking Poles Reduce Risk of Strain and Injury in Hikers

New research has found that using trekking poles while hiking downhill reduces force and strain on knees and ankles when hiking with or without a backpack. This is good news—and offers a practical tip—for hikers and backpackers as well as for those involved in search and rescue who often carry loads during the search mission.

http://www.isb2005.org/proceedings/abstracts/0970.pdf

Free Directory Assistance (aka 411) Phone Number

We’ve all been in situations where we needed a phone number and the easiest or only option was to call 411. Often we are charged $1.00 or more per call. Now there is a new toll free number—almost as easy to remember: 1 (800) FREE 411, or 1 (800) 373-3411 —that incurs no cost at all. We checked the urban legends reference pages on the web, which gives the claim “true” status. Find out more about how it works at the link below.

http://www.snopes/com/inboxer/nothing/free411.asp