The building committee has decided a good option for a better shack at the Legion post is to get an office trailer, the kind you see at construction sites. With a 10’x40’ foot trailer, we would be able to have a training room that can fit 15 people, and a generous 10’x10’ shack. These units usually come with a heat-pump style HVAC system, so we should be able to use it year-round.
A new trailer is clearly outside our price range. It would take more than the savings of MGRC, and it would be very difficult to get grants for that much. And I can speak for most members and say we want to spend only a small fraction of our savings on this.
We’ve looked at 3 trailers over the last month. The first one was unacceptable. The second one, 12’x56’, is pretty good, but it would take a significant amount of time to fix up. We saw one last week in much better shape, at 10’x40’, which would still take a lot of work but much less. But this one sold right away.
But let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Volunteerism at MGRC has been down for the last few years. It took us longer than it should have to get our little shed together, and very few people are using it. It’s going to take quite a bit more work to get a trailer rigged up. If we are going to do this, we should get a commitment from everyone in the club to volunteer to work on it. If half the membership commits 5 hours, that would be enough to get us started. If you can’t commit to that, then you should vote “No” to the project.
Be sure to attend our meeting on Tuesday, I think we have a lot to talk about.
73
Benton Jackson, K0BHJ
