Changes to the Telescope Loaner Program

I am happy to announce that the board is turning on the loaner program. The board asked me to be the acting chair. We need lots of help as will be described later in this message.

To avoid chaos we will turn on the program in stages. I hope that it will not be long before the full program will be active, but I cannot tell you how long that will be.

A number of the scopes are currently being stored by non-members. Initially only these scopes are available immediately. You can see which scopes are available at http://www.sjaa.net/loaners/sjaaloan.html.

This will allow the club to get the scopes back under control. Storage for these scopes is a major issue. Even if you only want to donate space for storage, we would appreciate you taking the loan of one of these scopes.

Once we get these scopes under control, we will open the loans up to other scopes.

The new loaner program will depend on the efforts of volunteers. We need help in the following areas:

1. Storage

2. Avoiding the high cost of commercial space

3. Some Place to hold returned scopes

4. Handling the transfer of scopes from storage to loanee and vice versa

5. Assistance in evaluating and documenting current inventory

6. Training new users

To borrow (provide storage for) one of the available scopes or for more information please contact me at loaner@sjaa.net.

Rob Hawley