Report by Jeff Page.

Participants: Rick Hines, Bill Gee, Rita Worden, Nathan, Sarah, Sam and Ben Taylor, Matthew Hernandez (new member) and Jeff Page. Cameo appearance by Terry Sherman on Friday evening.

All except Rita came Friday evening and camped. The weather was perfect for outdoor activities. We had a few items on the list to be addressed. These things happened more or less simultaneously.

Bill and Jeff worked on removing the electric power service to the late Bill Pfantz’s yard where he lived intermittenly over the past several years. With Bill on a ladder outside pulling and Jeff on a ladder inside pushing, we got the feed wire out of the silo. Next was Bill up a ladder on the tripod next to the fence removing the wire from its suspension point. Last was to salvage the wire for future purpose by carefully rolling it up and storing.

Bill and Jeff also worked on installing a donated cell phone signal amplifier to the silo. After locating a tower with a phone app at a bearing of 220 degrees, Bill went up a ladder to install the antenna portion onto the same mast that the rain gauge is set on and aimed it that direction. Running the antenna cable into the silo and connecting with the receiver unit was relativey easy. When tested inside the silo, four bar reception was available and a call was made successfully. Ideally, this will be used to provide an enhanced signal to the campground area. Since the receiver portion is not waterproof, Bill found a plastic container to store it. It’s a fairly simple matter to plug in the receiver, wait for two green lights and unit is ready to go.

The rest of the group spent a lot of time moving our lumber stored in the schoolhouse up to the silo location. There is a considerable amount of it and we weren’t able to get it all moved. What we do with it ultimately is still up in the air, but our aim is to consolidate our presence to the silo area and be done with the schoolhouse property altogether. If we don’t end up building something with the lumber, it will make a nice stash of firewood.