SAR COORDINATES
July 2008
TONTO RIM SEARCH AND RESCUE SQUAD, Inc.
P.O. BOX 357
STRAWBERRY AZ 85544
www.trsar.org
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
Commanders Corner
Reminders:
Raffle ticket sales July 4th weekend – all 3 days. This is a big
money raiser for us, so help out if you can. Greg sent out an email
with schedule. Please check your email, and fill in where it looks
light.
Other News:
Several of us took a swiftwater awareness class at the end of May.
This was prompted primarily because of the mission in late November
2007 where we ran into unexpected creek rises during a night of
heavy rain and snow.
The class was excellent in a number of ways, but especially in that
it illustrated that we need more education in how to deal with
swiftwater. I can recall at least 4 missions during my time in the
squad where we had to deal with swiftwater. Based on this class, we
have done things right – and wrong. Swiftwater will happen in this
area, both summer and winter, and we need to raise our awareness of
the things we can do and the things we can’t do. Swiftwater can be
dangerous if not handled properly.
The board has approved purchase of swiftwater rescue gear, so we
will be adding swiftwater training to our training schedule. Stay
tuned – we will have more information at the next couple of meetings
as we develop our requirements.
Mission Summaries:
There have been quite a few missions over the last 2 months. Fossil
Springs continues to be a draw for people - and for us. Mostly heat
related and injuries. Most of them have been quick and uneventful.
Here’s to hoping that trend continues.
Stay safe and stay prepared.
Bill Pitterle – Commander, #500
Don’t forget; the meetings this month are
July 8th for the Board
and
July 10th
for the General Meeting.
Something to think about this summer
These photos reportedly came from an Animal Control officer in
Safford, Arizona.
This snake den was (reportedly) found near the Rancho Santa Fe
subdivision, that's the area between the Safford Hospital and Daily
Estates in Thatcher.
Click for larger pictures
July 2008 Training & Events
Schedule
17- July (Thu) Night Tracking – Time: 0800 –
Place: FR 198 (follow cones) – Les Hulse in charge
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
19- July (Sat) Rope Training – Time: 0700 –
Place: Pine Canyon Narrows – Roger Miotto and rope instructors
in charge
_________________________________________________________
9-Aug (Sat) Tracking Classroom – Time: 0800
– Place: Squad Building – Les Hulse in charge
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Training
Sessions (Coming this Year)
16-Jul First Responder
13-Aug CPR
Planned Navigation Training –
Compass and GPS
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
Active:
Members wishing to remain on active status must attend at least
three official Squad functions per quarter of the calendar year, as
well as two training exercises per six months of the calendar year.
Reserve:
Members who wish to remain on reserve status must attend at least
one official Squad function per quarter of the calendar year as well
as one training exercise per six months of the calendar year.
Planned Fundraising Events for
Raffle Ticket Sales
Pine /Strawberry Arts & Crafts Festivals - Pine AZ
Cool Stuff For The Outdoors
By now you have probably spotted "Lawrence of Arabia" cruising
around out there on some of our missions.
Lawrence, aka Dave
Pirtle, has been doing this stuff for a long time and knows just how
to stay a little on the cultured side of "Red Neck". Or, more
specifically, to save his red neck from getting even redder and
possibly having a bout with skin cancer. His less than dapper head
gear makes a lot of sense in our Arizona sun. Even when the
temperature is relatively cool out there the sun's rays at our 5000
foot elevation is doing a lot of damage to our skin. We often think
about covering up in the winter time when it is cold... but covering
up in the summertime with the right "Cool Stuff" is a wise thing to
do as well. Did you know that you can get sunburned through a
T-shirt?
No one wants to be hot, uncomfortable, sweaty or suffer the ill
effects of a burn after a long day in our summer sun.
We have all been told about slathering on sun screen. Sun screen is
great for protecting you skin but it has its drawbacks. It's
greasy, stinky, and if you get in your eyes it will burn like
there's no tomorrow...and yet, it is absolutely essential stuff
unless you can accomplish that same thing a different way.
Now for the "Cool Stuff". . . There are a lot of new, engineered,
light weight, sweat wicking, SPF rated, synthetic fabrics out there
that manufacturers are using to make hats, shirts and pants out of.
With these new fabrics you can wear long sleeve shirts and long
pants and still stay cool and dry. In fact, with the right long
sleeve clothing you can stay cooler than wearing an
old traditional short sleeve shirt or T-shirt and these products can
literally
"Save Your Hide".
Don't forget "Lawrence of Arabia". A baseball cap alone just
doesn't cut it. Get a hat that shades you face, ears, nose and the
back of your neck or wear a veil like Dave does. If you look like
Lawrence, so what, you will be glad you did after you get home from
a long day in the sun and you will save Big Time down the
road when you don't have to pay some doctor to cut little chunks of
cancerous meat off your head, neck and face.
For more information on these new Sun Engineered products and how
they work visit the websites listed below:
http://www.columbia.com/OmniShade.aspx
http://www.rei.com/expertadvice/articles/sun+protection.html
So now you have the straight scoop...Lawrence is really a "Cool
Dude". . and that is this month's Cool
Stuff For The Outdoors.
Greg 521
PS - If you're not wearing gloves don't forget to put sunscreen on the
back of your hands. A lot of people develop skin cancer on the
back of their hands from years of exposure to the sun.
SAR Reader Offer
For
any Squad member who would like to read some interesting books on
SAR in the National Parks, I have recently purchased two very good
books, “Over the Edge, Death in the Grand Canyon”, and “Off the
Wall, Death in Yosemite,” both by Michael P. Ghiglieri. He has put
together two very interesting accounts of all known fatal mishaps in
these two Parks.
If
you are interested, I will loan them to you or they can be purchased
through many different venues. Also, I would imagine you can check
them out of the local Libraries, although I did not verify that.
Mike 502L
miket@trsar.org
Computer Tips, Techniques, Rants, Raves, and Netiquette
submitted by Les
Hulse
This month, we will
take a look at creating audio files on the PC using either CDs or
records (vinyl) as the source.
There will not be
any discussion of the ongoing controversy dealing with “copy
protection” and “digital rights” – this is being fought between
lawyers in the courts right now.
Now why would you
want to do this? Well, you may have several favorite pieces of music
that are on several different CDs and may want to make your own CD
containing only your favorite songs. Or you may have a collection of
old vinyl records that you want to convert to CDs (this is one of my
projects).
As an example, I
take a lot of photographs and put them on DVDs with an audio
background. After returning from a recent trip to Mexico, I knew I
would want to add Mexican music to my DVD containing Mexico photos.
So I purchased several instrumental CDs in Mexico for transfer to
the PC.
Anyway, there are
several different topics with respect to handling audio:
1 – Copying music
from CDs to your PC,
2 – Copying your
old records (vinyl) to your PC (for us old-timers),
3 – Processing
audio tracks to “clean them up”, and
4 – Creating your
own music CDs.
The first task is
getting the music you want off of the CD and into the PC. To do
this, you can use a free program called Audiograbber (
http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/
).
This program allows
you to get any or all audio tracks from the CD and store them as
individual files on the PC. Since the audio tracks on a CD are
already in digital format, the copying is quite fast. The individual
sound tracks can be saved in several different formats depending on
how you will want to use them in the future. CDs are usually pretty
“clean” and musical clean-up normally is not needed.
When copying music
from an old vinyl record to the PC, you will be dealing with an
analog signal, not a digital format. Getting the music into the PC
can be done any number of ways that usually involve hooking up your
stereo system to the PC or using custom preamps. You will also need
a signal conversion program to change the analog signal to digital.
In my case, I use a turntable that connects directly to a USB port
on the PC.
To capture and
convert the analog signal to digital, you can use a free program
called Audacity
(
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
). As the record is played, the program displays a wave
diagram corresponding to the sound as it is being captured. All of
the “pops, clicks, and crackles” from the vinyl surface are
reproduced faithfully.
If the captured
sound was now recorded to a CD, it would sound just like the
original vinyl record source – including all the bad stuff. So how
can we fix this?
You can actually
clean up the sound tracks using Audacity, but it is a lot of work. A
better solution lies in a piece of software called Spin-It-Again.
This software is not free, but costs $39.95 (
http://www.acoustica.com/spinitagain/
). The software can perform 3 functions – (1) record from vinyl
(like Audacity), (2) record from cassette tape, and (3) process
sound files. I do not use the first 2 capabilities, but use the
third one extensively.
This program allows
one to remove all of the “pops, clicks, and crackles” from the sound
file. If desired, sound equalization can also be done. Using this
capability, you can capture a “tinny” soundtrack from a recording
made in the 1930s and make it sound like a high-fidelity recording
from the 1960s.
The final step in
this process is making an audio CD that can be used in a CD player.
Any of the software packages that we discussed last month can be
used to burn audio CDs (see previous article). If you are making a
DVD, the audio tracks on your PC have to be added to the movies
using your DVD building software.
As a special option
this month, you can listen to about 1 minute of a soundtrack taken
from a Louis Armstrong album recorded in the early 1940s. The first
example is taken directly from the record – notice clicks, pops,
etc. The second example is the same track after cleaning – notice
the cleaner sound.
I hope this article
gives you some useful information on handling audio.
Have fun.
This first example
is taken directly from the record – notice clicks, pops, etc
1.5MB
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.
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.
HUMOR ME
Blonde Mortician.........
A man
who just died is delivered to a local mortuary wearing an expensive,
expertly tailored black suit. The female blonde mortician asks the
deceased's wife how she would like the body dressed. She points out
that the man does look good in the black suit he is already wearing.
The
widow, however, says that she always thought her husband looked his
best in blue, and that she wants him in a blue suit. She gives the
blonde mortician a blank check and says, 'I don't care what it
costs, but please have my husband in a blue suit for the viewing.'
The
woman returns the next day for the wake. To her delight, she finds
her husband dressed in a gorgeous blue suit with a subtle chalk
stripe; the suit fits him perfectly.
She
says to the mortician, 'Whatever this cost, I'm very satisfied. You
did an excellent job and I'm very grateful. How much did you spend?'
To her astonishment, the blonde mortician presents her with the
blank check. 'There's no charge,' she says.
'No,
really, I must compensate you for the cost of that exquisite blue
suit!' she says.
'Honestly, ma'am,' the blonde says, 'it cost nothing. You see, a
deceased gentleman of about your husband's size was brought in
shortly after you left yesterday, and he was wearing an attractive
blue suit. I asked his wife if she minded him going to his grave
wearing a black suit instead, and she said it made no difference as
long as he looked nice.'
'So I
just switched the heads.'
BET
YOU DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING!!!
*********************************************************
Thanks to those who contributed to this issue
of the newsletter.
Mike 502
miket@trsar.org
