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CX2SA > ARES 21.06.12 05:17l 364 Lines 20649 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: ARES E-Letter June 20, 2012
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From: CX2SA@CX2SA.SAL.URY.SA
To : ARES@WW
The ARES E-Letter June 20, 2012
Editor: Rick Palm, K1CE
* Northeast Florida ARES Ops Work Tropical Storm Beryl
* Hurricane Station WX4NHC Annual Station Test a Success
* California ARES Hospital Group to Operate Field Day
* Letters: ARES and Digital Communications Standardization
* Links of Interest
* Letters: Surplus Pub-Safety Radios
* Silent Key: SKYWARN Founder Merle G. Kachenmeister, WA8EWW
* Correction: Hurricane Watch Net
* Letters: ARESMAT Concept
* KI1U For a Final
Northeast Florida ARES Ops Work Tropical Storm Beryl
----------------------------------------------------
Nassau County (northeast Florida) ARESİ worked closely with county Emergency
Management during Tropical Storm Beryl last month. County Emergency Manager
Danny Hinson called me (EC Brian Kopp, KC5LPA) on Saturday morning, May 26,
about 40 hours prior to landfall, and told me the county Emergency
Operations Center (EOC) would be activated and that he could use some
emergency communications assistance. I e-mailed and called my Assistant
Emergency Coordinators, and then headed to the EOC. One of my AECs came
along and we spent the day calling ARES members to line them up for possible
shelter and EOC work. We also checked radio communications in the EOC
communications center.
On Sunday morning, we were back at the EOC and got the word that the County
might open 1 or 2 shelters. By agreement, ARES provides communications
support from the shelters to the EOC so that meant we needed to have hams
ready to deploy. Nassau County has a barrier island where a large percentage
of residents live and there were no plans to evacuate so we needed to have
ARES operators staged on the island and on the mainland, in case bridge
access was closed. It worked out that we had enough hams on the mainland and
on the island so we were covered.
For this storm the county decided to use "unadvertised" shelters. This is a
protocol where the county prepares a shelter but does not actively inform
the public. When residents call the EOC with a storm related emergency, they
are "triaged" on the phone and a decision is made whether to send them to a
shelter. A typical candidate resident might be a special needs patient who
has an oxygen machine that needs power but is experiencing a local power
outage in their area. The first resident that is sent to the shelter,
effectively means the shelter is opened. Logistically, ARES had to be ready
so we had hams standing by to go into the shelters. In fact, for one of the
two planned shelters an ARES couple took their RV to the shelter location in
advance of the storm so they could support right away if the shelter opened.
They were also able to relay situational information about the shelter to
the EOC; for instance, letting the EOC know when the Red Cross had dropped
off cots, bedding, and water.
On Sunday night, the storm hit but not before the winds increased
significantly from the early estimates. We had hams in the EOC
communications room during the height of the storm. They maintained
communications with our hams waiting at the shelter, those hams on standby
and with hams at the Jacksonville EOC. As it turned out the shelters were
not needed for the storm.
One big issue that we hadn't counted on was that being Memorial Day weekend,
many county employees were out of town. On Monday morning, after Beryl made
landfall and the county was waking up and assessing the damage, Hinson asked
us to continue to help out in the EOC since they were short staffed. When
Eric Anderson, W4FSA, one of my AECs, walked into the EOC Monday morning he
found himself answering telephone calls from the public. Soon after I
arrived there ARES was tasked with using our communications skills to
collect damage reports. The damage assessment teams included those from the
Red Cross, some county employees, and Nassau County Fire Rescue. The teams
were calling in reports on the county's 800 MHz radio system. ARES, using
county radios we had in the EOC communications room, took down the
information and then created a database and map on the fly so the EOC could
assess the impact to the county.
In addition, Hinson requested ARES hams provide neighborhood reports of
damage, which we collected at the EOC using our ARES Amateur Radio repeater
system. There were also some assessment teams who came in from the field
with hand written reports and they were sent to us where we data based their
information as well. The small communications room was a noisy place for a
good part of the day on Monday.
After 3 days of support the Nassau County ARES team was able to stand down
from performing a job well done. On the whole the county was lucky. A
handful of homes and businesses were damaged, mainly from falling trees, but
the majority of the county came through Beryl with minimal impact.
My thanks to our team who helped out: Tony W9AFM, Eric W4FSA, Paul AE4MM,
Fred WK1F, Patti WK1E, Ron KC4MYV, Joe KM9V, Tom KJ4WQK, Mike KF4DSK, Dwayne
KQ4XF, and Tom KJ4WHK. -- Brian Kopp, KC5LPA, Nassau County, Florida ARES
Emergency Coordinator
Hurricane Station WX4NHC Annual Station Test a Success
------------------------------------------------------
Each year prior to hurricane season, the Amateur Radio station WX4NHC at the
National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida, conducts a major on-the-air
exercise to test all of its radio equipment, antennas and computers, and to
practice some of the procedures used during actual hurricane operations.
This year was no exception. Julio Ripoll, WD4R, the station's assistant
coordinator, filed a report with the ARES E-Letter.
"We did have a malfunction of one of our main computers that is used for
EchoLink and APRS during the test due to a faulty fan that caused it to
overheat. We reverted to the use of a back up computer to resume operation
on the EchoLink/IRLP Hurricane Net that was in progress without missing any
contacts. This was good practice of using our backup systems while we were
on the air. The faulty main computer is being replaced this week."
Ripoll reported 144 contacts on HF and 59 on EchoLink/IRLP during the test
event. "We also received reports via our on-line reporting webpage, Winlink,
APRS and e-mail. Stations contacted were from many states, from the west
coast to New England, Canada and the Caribbean islands."
"We were surprised and honored to receive a very special weather report from
N2OBS in Camp Dwyer, Afghanistan, who relayed our appreciation and best
wishes to the men and women in uniform there," said Ripoll. "It was also
great to speak with Jean-Robert, HH2JR, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and Father
John, HH6JH, on Ile de Vache, who were so instrumental to our UM/Medishare
Ham Radio Mission after the Haiti Earthquake." "Mike Kelley, KJ4YDX, Vice
Chairman of Medical Administration for the University of Miami and former
Chief Operations Officer for the UM/Medishare Haiti Mission, spoke with both
Jean-Robert and Father John about the past and current UM/Medishare field
hospital missions in Haiti and thanked them for their help with the
HH2/WX4NHC communications."
Ripoll concluded: "WX4NHC, a group of 30 volunteer Amateur Radio operators
at the National Hurricane Center (NHC) appreciated all of the participation
and support of the stations that contacted us during our annual test and
look forward to their continuing support during the rest of the hurricane
season." [Information on the National Hurricane station WX4NHC and an
on-line hurricane report form can be found here. - ed.]
California ARES Hospital Group to Operate Field Day
---------------------------------------------------
The famous Hospital Disaster Support Communications System (HDSCS) of Orange
County, California, will participate with Huntington Beach Hospital in this
year's ARRL Field Day exercise. The group will be communicating for 24 hours
straight under emergency conditions. HDSCS ops plan to make use of the
buildings, parking stands, and flagpoles to create antennas. They will be
hanging out in those bright yellow surge capacity tents and making Field Day
contacts and report exchanges. The members will also make satellite contacts.
District Emergency Coordinator (DEC) April Moell, WA6OPS, invited other
operators to visit: "If you live or work nearby we hope you might be able to
come and check out the setup, talk with some of our members, and maybe get
on and make a radio contact yourself. If you have kids or grandkids, bring
them too. Remember you can stop by anytime during the 24 hour time period.
We might not be able to provide as thorough a tour after midnight but you
can still have some fun checking things out. And maybe you can help keep our
radio operators awake."
Listen for the HDSCS operation on one of the various modes, using the call
signs W6H and K6MHD. They hope to make contacts with all 50 states. -- April
Moell, M.A., CHCom, WA6OPS, District Emergency Coordinator, ARES Hospital
Disaster Support Communications System, Orange County, CA
Letters: ARES and Digital Communications Standardization
--------------------------------------------------------
I serve as president of the Loma Prieta Amateur Radio Club (LPARC) in the
Santa Cruz mountains of California. My purpose in writing is that our club
spans two counties, and I perceive that there are some differences in
approach to digital communications between operational areas. One county has
a vigorous ARES program, and makes use of Outpost software. The other county
is a bit newer to the digital communications party for emcomm, and has
recently begun to make use of FLDIGI software using MT63-2K mode. Other
nearby counties' ARES organizations also use FLDIGI.
It's likely that each approach has its share of advantages and
disadvantages, but as a small organization in a relatively small community,
LPARC would be challenged to maintain and train on multiple sets of software
serving a similar purpose. My question to the emcomm community is: what is
being done/planned to steer our DECs towards a common solution for digital
communications? We've read about how divergent systems in the public sector
cause widespread interoperability challenges, and we don't need to repeat
that in our community! I hope we're already working on this. Thank you for
broadening visibility of this issue. -- David Katinsky, N2RDT, President,
Loma Prieta Amateur Radio Club, California
Links of Interest
-----------------
Hughes Announces Emergency Networking Solutions in Anticipation of Hurricane
Season -- Solutions Ensure Government and Business Networks Stay Up and
Running When Disaster Strikes. -- Thanks, Bob Bauer, KC4HM; APCO
International Public Safety Communications, May 31, 2012
Letters: Surplus Pub-Safety Radios
----------------------------------
Has your emcomm group taken advantage of the surplus Public-Safety radios
that are being taken out of service? The Muskegon County (Michigan)
Emergency Communication Services EmComm group has been using non-compliant
commercial transceivers for APRS Digis, APRS trackers, WinLink 2000 go kits,
packet operations, portable transceivers, repeaters, portable repeaters, and
provides a newly licensed ham with a radio to use until they purchase one.
The FCC has mandated that commercial and public safety users must have their
radio systems upgraded to the new narrowband emission standards by January
1, 2013. This mandate applies to users in the VHF 150 MHz and UHF 450 MHz
bands. Only a small group of users within these bands are not required to
migrate to narrowband emissions such as GMRS, FRS, Marine transceivers, and
NOAA weather transmitters.
Set up a meeting with your emergency management agency contact to ask what
their plans are for disposing of the non-narrow band equipment. If they have
no plans, put a written plan together for donating the radios to your group,
emphasizing the benefits to both organizations. Hopefully the decision
makers will see the many uses of this older equipment to your group versus
being sent to the salvage yard.
After you have secured the equipment one of the first requirements will be
to have the radios "wiped clean" of their public-safety frequencies.
Agencies with a radio shop might even re-program the radios to your
frequencies, or you might already have members of your group that have the
necessary equipment for re-programming.
Most commercial radio equipment is capable of being used in the Amateur
Radio bands. There are many advantages to using commercial equipment. Two of
the many benefits are the capability of operating in congested RF
environments, and this is a simple radio to operate for the new ham/emcomm
member.-- James C. Duram, K8COP, Emergency Coordinator, RACES Radio Officer,
Professional Emergency Manager (PEM), Communications Unit Leader (COM-L);
Muskegon County Emergency Communication Services, Inc., Muskegon, Michigan
Silent Key: SKYWARN Founder Merle G. Kachenmeister, WA8EWW
----------------------------------------------------------
Merle G. Kachenmeister, WA8EWW, died May 29 at the age of 82 in the care of
Hospice of NW Ohio. He had lived most recently in Blissfield, Michigan. A
Navy veteran, he began his career doing weather for the Navy, according to
his obituary. He then worked for the US Weather Bureau, later renamed the
National Weather Service, where he developed the SKYWARN weather warning
system following the deadly 1965 Palm Sunday tornadoes. In recognition, the
US Department of Commerce awarded him a bronze service medal in 1974.
With Amateur Radio operators at the forefront of the SKYWARN program, the
ARRL and the National Weather Service have cosponsored SKYWARN Recognition
Day since 1999. A pioneering television meteorologist, Kachenmeister retired
from WTOL in Toledo, Ohio after stints at several other TV stations. - ARRL
Web site
Correction: Hurricane Watch Net
-------------------------------
First, thanks for mentioning the Hurricane Watch Net in your Atlantic
hurricane season article in the last issue. There was an error made,
however, in regard to when we activate the net. The HWN only activates when
hurricanes threaten land in the Atlantic, Caribbean Basin, and Gulf of Mexico.
This will be the HWN's 47th consecutive hurricane season, as the net was
begun in 1965 during Hurricane Betsy. We obtain real time, ground truth
weather observations from hams in or near these storms and relay the info to
the National Hurricane Center in Miami. While our primary focus remains to
be on 14.325 MHz, recent solar cycle fluctuations and the resultant
propagation anomalies have required us to be flexible and operate on 40
and/or 80 meter frequencies, as well. - Brad Pioveson, W9FX [ARRL Illinois
ARES Section Emergency Coordinator; Illinois Emergency Management Agency
State RACES Officer; and Army MARS Agency Liaison. Pioveson is also ARRL
Central Division representative to the Emergency Communications Advisory
Committee (ECAC); and member of the Hurricane Watch Net (since 1995). He
serves as President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Hurricane
Watch Net, Inc. Since 1995, W9FX has served as National Training Officer for
SATERN.]
And as a teaser...watch for information about a 2012 hurricane season
webinar that will feature presentations by WX4NHC, HWN, VOIP WX Net, and
ARRL HQ staff. Information will be made available on the ARRL website and
ARRL_EmComm Twitter feed.
Letters: ARESMAT Concept
------------------------
This concept [ARESMAT, last issue] is one that was both cussed and discussed
at several disaster debriefings that I had the opportunity of taking part in
while an active member of the Red Cross Disaster Services Human Resources
(DSHR) over the years (1994 through 2005). Several points that need to be
clearly agreed upon whenever we ask volunteers to leave home for any period
of time are the use of personal vehicles (gas and parking), personal
liability, lodging, and meals. Volunteers must be sure that their medical
insurance will cover such activities and that they will be able to get
refills of any prescriptions that they need. What may be covered by Illinois
Volunteer Laws may be quite different from those in the "Host" state. --Tod
West, KB9AIL, Illinois ARES OES
KI1U For a Final
----------------
[This month, we defer to ARRL's Emergency Preparedness Manager Mike Corey,
KI1U, for his compelling essay on upgrading. - K1CE]
Upgrade
Each one of us came into the Amateur Radio Service through a gateway; for
some it was shortwave listening, others knew a ham and thought it seemed
like something fun to do, and others may have got their start through a
scouting project. Many Amateurs, in recent years, have gotten their license
because of emergency preparedness or public service interest.
However you came into the hobby your second step, after getting your
license, is to put it to good use. Naturally you're going to explore what
sparked your interest first, but from there the Amateur Radio Service can
offer you much more, but you'll probably need to upgrade.
The importance of upgrading your license is critical for those with an
interest in emergency communications and public service. We have a tendency
to think that these activities are limited to the VHF/UHF bands and a
Technician license will suffice. It is true that many local emcomm and
public service activities center on local repeaters, but you wouldn't put
only band aids in your first aid kit so why would you only put VHF/UHF in
your communications tool box?
The first and most important reason to upgrade is that it will give you more
privileges on the Amateur Radio bands. You will have more radio spectrum at
your disposal and can move past the gate and explore the rest of the
Service. Remember that your Amateur Radio license is not what makes you an
asset to emergency communications and public service; your license allows
you to get on the air and improve your operating and technical skills. It is
being a well rounded Amateur Radio operator that makes you an asset. No one
got their driver's license and expected to win the Indy 500 the next day.
Never miss an opportunity to get on the air.
The second reason to upgrade is to add to your communications tool box. We
often think of our communications tool box (not to be confused with our
go-kit) in terms of modes and devices, but it also includes spectrum. Adding
more HF spectrum you can use improves your tool box. It gives you more ways
to improve your skills as an Amateur Radio operator and as a communications
volunteer to your served agencies.
So, it's time to upgrade! Start by getting a good study manual, available
through the ARRL and many Amateur Radio vendors. And don't forget to try a
few practice exams before you take the real thing. Practice exams are
available online. The next step is to work with your elmer. A good elmer
doesn't quit once you pass your Technician exam; they are there to help you
learn and grow as an Amateur Radio operator. And finally when you're ready,
find an exam session. You can find information on the license classes, exam
sessions, and more at http://www.arrl.org/licensing-preparation-exams Good
luck and I hope to hear you on the air! - Mike Corey, KI1U
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