Happenings

Holy Jet Lag, Greg Bachnik is in Africa!

Its true! Greg, the LZ's Chaplain, signed up for a Missionary school and went to Mozambique for training. Read all about it HERE.

The LZ is on Google Earth

For those of you who have Google Earth installed on your computers, type in "Lang Ruong, Vietnam" in the search box. Once you get there, zoom out a bit and and head south. You will come to a place where there are three marker dots fairly close together. If you put mouse cursor over two of them, they will say "The Rockpile". Head Northwest and you will see a dot out there all by itself. Put your curser over that and it will say "LZ Russell". Click the dot and you can get some very basic information.,,but we're going to change that.

The person who posted this marker on Google Earth is not a member of the associaton. He has posted serveral fire base and LZ locations in the area and seems to have a grip on how to read a map. I hope some of our guys check it out and verify the coordiantes. If they are correct, then we can proceed to fill the place up with information by placing more dots in the same vacinity that will lead to our web site, to pictures on our web site, stories, videos and even the "LZ Russell Story", once it is created. It is a great way of letting the world know who we are, because students are encouraged to use Google Earth when studying foreign lands, or foreign wars. I am hoping the Vietnamese discover it and post their own abot the LZ. What a great find that would be! Some of our guys with connections in Vietnam might drop a word to the right people and start something!

If you explore the area south of the LZ you will find Vandergrift (LZ Stud). Head east, along the river and you will find Cam Lo, Dong Ha and many other places you may have visited, or heard of, during your vacation in country. If our LZ members got excited about this, we would wind up owning the whole vacinity, from Da Nang to Laos on Google Earth...or at least be well represented!

If you have high speed Internet and do not have Google Earth on your computer, you are missing out on one of the most fantastic things ever created for the Internet...and it is FREE. Just go to Earth.Google.com to check it out. They walk you though the very simple download and installation process. You won't regret it!

Reunion

The last we heard about the Reunion was that Rick Davis was going to set it up in Montana for us. But we haven't heard back from Rick on that for over a year, now. Sooo.....

If Rick hasn't set it up in Montana, then most likely it will be in Las Vegas. Vegas was the second option chosen at the last reunion and it seems to be the most popular place to hold our reunions. It is easy and cheap to get to from everywhere. We know the ropes there, because we have had two reunions there already. And, lets face it, ITS FUN!

When it will be is still up for Grabs. Kenny Heins, our President, is spearheading the effort so contact him about details...and then let Skip know so he can start building a web site for it.

Video Interviews

At our last reunion, in Las Vegas, we had a group for the University of Florida show up and video tape everyone's interview about Vietnam. They promised to make copies and give them to us to use for our web site...because part of the agreement to let them do it was that WE own the copyright. To this date, I have not heard from, nor do I get responses from ANYONE who was involved. Maybe it is time our Member Lawyers pulled out the big guns, ya think?

If we can't get resolution on the Video Interviews thing soon, then I suggest we do it ourselves. All we would need is a quality DIGITAL video camera, some lights and some sound equipment to pull it off. My guess is a thousand bucks should buy everything we need. Anything we film can be placed on our web site and personal web pages, plus select videos and excerpts for The LZ Russell Story multi-media web presentation.

I will be glad to do the videos. Besides, I could use a new digital video camera...heh, heh. I might even get some shots of Robb Mitchell playing his guitar!...And Kenny could take it to Vietnam, next time he heads up to LZ Russell. And we ony have ONE video of any of our renions, taken in Washington DC. Dang!

It needs to be a fairly decent camera...with good lenses like Canon makes, image stabilization and an internal digital memory hard drive/or chip. Messin' around with scratch prone CD disks is dangerous...especially when traveling. So....who is going to spring for this setup if the Board approves it? I'll put $100 towards it, after Christmas.

Your Videos

Some of you guys have videos of our reunions and I never got a copy!!! Others, like Terry Webber, have made some really great little videos showing him in his various hotrods that needs to be in Sitrep and on our site. Others have placed your Vietnam Home Movies on VCR, but haven't taken them down to have them DIGITIZED yet. DANG! Here is what you guys need to do:

Get everything digitized. You can take your VCR down to just about any camera joint and they will do it for you. If you have a CD of your videos, or video files that you can send to me by email, then you are already a step ahead...but only a step. There is a better way.

YouTube.com will let you upload your videos to their web site FREE...so anyone can see them, anytime, from anywhere. It is easy to join and VERY easy to upload your videos, if they are already on your computer. The only drawback is the video has to be no longer than 10 minutes. If you MUST post a larger video, then you will have to use Google Video...which has unlimited file space, but the streaming quality isn't as good as YouTube (they're working on it).

Once you get your video posted to either of those sites, you only have to send me the link to where it is, by email. Then I can "embed" that video on any web page in our site....which is WAY easier than having to get a copy of your video and then uploading it to our web servers for streaming back to our web site. But I DO recommend that you send me a copy of that video file anyway, because if anything happens to the files you have on YouTube, or Google, I will have a permanent record to fix things.

This probably sounds complicated to you, but it isn't...and you won't know that 'till you try it. YouTube has gone to great lengths to make it just as simple and easy to do as possible. They walk you through every step....all ONE of them. So get your videos out, guys, and let's get them posted to the web site!

Pictures - You guys have them and you're not getting them digitized down at WalMart and sending them to Skip to post on the web site. How come? How about it, guys...we're making history on the web site. Be part of it!

Stories - Have you sent yours in yet? Just type it up in an email and send it in...or attach a word document to your email...but get it here, PLEASE. I know you don't think you are a writer, but you are wrong. You don't have to write like Hemmingway. The little details about life in Nam that you remember are VALUABLE to our history. So please, get your stories in!

Money - No one gets paid to work for the LZ, but that doesn't mean we don't have costs. We don't have dues, we don't screw up our site with advertising and we don't jam you all the time for cash...but that doesn't mean we don't need it. So, how about it? If you already sent some, lately...THANKS from all of our members!!