The Lansing Area/Ingham County Amateur Radio Public Service Corps is a volunteer emergency communications group. The group is organized under the ARRL Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES), and the FEMA-administered Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES). R.A.C.E.S. groups are chartered by local governments; the Lansing Area group is sponsored by, and has formal working relations with, the City of Lansing Emergency Management Division, and the Ingham County Sheriff's Department.

To build a coordinated resource of trained communicators, infrastructure and capabilities to assist our community by providing emergency and supplemental communications.

The Lansing / Ingham ARPSC will establish a voluntary organization of competent communicators with enhanced capabilities and a resilient infrastructure to support the community. This will be accomplished through, planning, recruitment, training and professionalism.

I would like to send thanks out to everyone that helped with the Skywarn training this weekend at Lansing Community College West Campus. Thank you especially to LCC for providing us with pastries and coffee and the room to hold our training in.

The Lansing ARPSC group is looking into holding an advanced Skywarn class sometime this fall or early winter. Please stay tuned to this space for detials on that!

There is still time to pre-register for the 2010 Ingham County Skywarn training to be held next Saturday, March 20th at 10 am. We currently have approximately 150 registrations for the skywarn training. Ernie Ostuno from the National Weather Service will be giving our talk this year. Ernie is one of the senior forecasters at the National Weather Service in Grand Rapids.

WLNS TV 6 Meteorologist Jim Geyer will be presenting immediately after Ernies presentation. We will have a short snack break. Please bring a snack if you wish to eat. There are also vending machines available.

The Lansing ARPSC group looks forward to seeing everyone at Skywarn this year!

Due to some unforseen circumstances, we will not be able to provide a lunch this year as we have in previous years. We will have a short break between presentations, and should be finished with our Skywarn Training by 1:30 pm at the latest this year.

Our guest speaker this year is Meteorologist Jim Geyer from WLNS TV 6 in Lansing. Jim has over 30 years experience as a meteorologist and has a great program lined up for everyone in attendance. Jim also recently got his ham radio license. His callsign is KD8CHU.

As always, we would like to thank Lansing Community College for the use of their facility for our training!

Meteorologist Rob Dale will be providing training on the GRLevel3 Weather Radar software package to Lansing ARPSC members. The training session is on March 22nd, 2010 from 7pm until 9pm at the Lansing EOC in Fire Station 8. All Lansing ARPSC members are welcome, especially those wishing to run Skywarn Nets.