The ARES E-Letter

Published by the American Radio Relay League
********************************************

June 20, 2012

Editor: Rick Palm, K1CE 

In This Issue:

IN THIS ISSUE

- 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) ARES® 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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