[NLRS] Aurora 2021

[Jon Platt]

Hello NLRS land...Our Upper Midwest Aurora Conference has historically been held in late April or early May.  With this timing in mind, given the ongoing COVID pandemic and the uncertainty around the exact timing for the vaccine roll out, its effectiveness on different emerging strains, the uncertainty around the ability of transfer from vaccinated infected asymptomatic individuals to others, and balanced all this against risk classification for our groups age, Aurora 2021 will not be held in its usual time spot.  ...Looking forward there is reason for optimism.  The J&J vaccine may be approved for EUA soon which will add additional vaccine manufacturing capacity.  Also, Pfizer is looking at the possibility of a third shot, or a booster shot, should the effectiveness of the current vaccine against the emerging strains prove to be less effective.  Although not certain, there is reason to believe that we could have most op's vaccinated by late Summer or early Fall.  There is reason for optimism....With this as a background, what about Aurora for 2021.  As has been discussed before we could do an online, Zoom-ish, conference.  My own thought is that this type of online conference lacks the personal interactions that is the true basis of our VHF+ based conferences, plus they do take some work and some resources to support.  Also discussed has been the possibility of doing just the outside part of our usual conference format, just the antenna range and the car-trunk-to-car-trunk swap.  Such a conference would allow for an outside social gathering and we could maybe do a short stand up club meeting as well.  If we were to do this, it would be better to slide the conference date deeper into the Summer time than April as many of our April based conferences have been pretty darn cold and/or snowed.  Then, what to do if it rains?   ...In summary, while we have not given up on Aurora 2021 it will not be held in the April/May time frame.  I do not favor a Zoom like conference albeit I could be convinced otherwise.  However, and in lieu of a Zoom conference, as we continue to monitor the uncertainties as outline above and as our optimism unfolds, we could look to have a full conference in later Summer or early Fall.   ...As always, comments welcomed....73, JonW0ZQ.