[Oremem/Idamem] All Oregon Army MARS Members

[leo]

Ladies and Gentlemen of Oregon Army MARS,

At present, there is a gap between the operations of those stations who are
primarily operating with VHF and our normal HF stations, and more
importantly, we are suffering from a lack of ability to get traffic into the
Portland area - our most populated state area.

To remedy these problems, the SMD is calling a VHF net on Wednesday nights
(2001 PDT, / 0301Z Thursday) on a simplex basis using the MARS simplex
frequency.  All member stations who feel they have a chance of operating on
this net are urged (STRONGLY) to attempt to participate.  We must open the
Portland area to more operating stations on VHF, HF, and digital
operations - it is our most populated area and yet is the most thinly
covered by MARS operators.  This shows a FEW problems to exist:
1.  Those operators in this area who are members are not active enough to
cover the needs of the state MARS missions - ostensibly, traffic handling.
2.  There is a serious lack of recruiting present in that area.
3.  There is a deplorable lack of use of our Gateway from the Portland area.

Hopefully, as is the spirit of Army MARS, our present operators will make
greater efforts to participate in our nets and will take the exhortation to
actively recruit more members into the Oregon Army MARS program.  We have
the equipment for repeaters to be placed throughout the state area, and this
demands we have the operators to maintain these operations and ACTIVE state
members to use them.  Oregon has enough active hams from which to enlist
members and Oregon Army MARS should be pursuing these hams through an
enthusiastic recruit effort by all members.  Frankly, this isn't being done
and one must know without a continuous program of recruitment, any
organization will die.

It is the desire of the SMD and his staff that all the present members of
the Portland area become more active on our HF and  VHF nets and that all
members make positive efforts to recruit more Portland area members.  Those
members' efforts will be reflected by future participation reports - may
those numbers soar in activity and new memberships!

73's
leo
AAR0NH