After cancelling the December and January Membership meetings, it was great to resume our meetings. We met on Tuesday, the 4th of February, and enjoyed a good turnout including some attendees we don’t see often. The previous two meetings were cancelled due to bad weather conditions. I devoted some time to explaining our current financial picture with the benefit of the End of Year report and January’s profit and loss statement. I also announced the Post now has a new IRS tax professional to replace Gene Klaus. Our Post enjoys a historically high financial standing and has completed several facility repair projects. We also announced plans to add cooling/heating capability to the West side offices of the Post to include offices and rest rooms. Adjutant Craddock announced the Post met its membership goal for this year. A tip of the hat to the Radio club for their continuing to bring on new members because of their Amateur radio testing program and use of membership retaining funds. Vice Commander Carney announced the future targeting of the Home-Schooling Programs to obtain Boy and Girl State Candidates. Director Walls confirmed the bad weather kept the Legion Riders off the road. Importantly, Chaplain Gutenson took many prayer requests and led us in joint prayer. Our meeting concluded with the serving of excellent pizza and membership comradery.
Our members are stepping up to very significantly contribute to this flow of improvements. The cleaning of the air/smoke filters is in works and we expect to have our Hall floor refinished. A general painting of the Post will likely follow. We completed the modification of our heating/cooling system to support the 6 new gaming machines in the non-smoking section. The vendor plans to add additional machines to that area and a few more to the original smoking area, reaching the maximum legal number of machines.
I want to thank Service Officer Dennis Weiskircher for personally purchasing and donating a sound amplifier system with blue tooth microphones for my use in conducting our membership meetings. My voice does not carry well. I have always used an older and very heavy sound system bought by Cmdr. Belcher. The new unit provides excellent clarity and volume and weighs only a few pounds precluding personal injury in moving the older unit.
Late Breaking News: After 7.5 years of the Post Radio Club sponsoring the American Legion National Dstar net, the net controllers and contributors universally decided to terminate this activity. A perfect storm of issues culminated in causing the operators to reflect on the value/ability of continuing this net. Technical issues and controller health issues dominated. We sincerely thank George Coomer, Ken Douglass, Ray Whitehouse (repeater owner), Gene Klauss, Dennis Weiskircher, Andy Rose, and the Post Commander. Ken managed the network for years and experienced health issues as a result. Andy assumed the controller role and continued until health issues precluded further support. In the Amateur community, only a few have the innate skills to control these nets without stress issues. Our Post greatly benefitted in this national spot light. Thank You!!!!
The next membership meeting is 4 March 2025 at 7 PM.
Respectfully,
Tony A. Cromwell
Post Commander kypost46@gmail.com