If you are having trouble reading this message, you can see the original at:
http://www.arrl.org/FandES/field/ares-el/?issue=2016-08-17

The ARES E-Letter

August 17, 2016
Editor: Rick Palm, K1CE

In This Issue:

 *  Spotlight: Boulder, Colorado ARES - A Juggernaut
 *  Letters: Lesson Learned - Mag Mounts, Not So Much
 *  California RACES/CERT Personnel Assist Seniors During Blackout
 *  Letters: Local Simplex Contests Out There?
 *  K4CJX to Chair a Regional Auxiliary Communications Working Group
 *  San Diego Microwave Network Adds Important New Client
 *  Palm Beach County (Florida) ARES Day A Success

ARRL Expresses Support for All Activities that Strengthen Emergency
Communications Infrastructure (8/3/2016)


ARES(R) Briefs, Links

Amateur Radio Plays Critical Role in Mountain Rescue (8/8/2016); Hurricane
Watch Net to Resume Operation as Earl Makes Landfall in Belize (8/4/2016);
Hurricane Watch Net to Activate (8/3/2016) MARS Sets Interoperability
Communications Exercise for August 15 (7/29/2016) [watch for after action
report in next issue -- ed.]


Popular ARRL Webinars Now Archived, Ready for Review

The following ARRL webinars garnered great interest and support from
participants, and are now posted online. Don't miss them!

2016 ARRL Hurricane Preparedness Webinar, hosted by ARRL Emergency
Preparedness Manager Mike Corey, KI1U

Contesting as Public Service/Disaster Communications Training, with Ward
Silver, N0AX, hosting. We hope you find them informative! -- Sean Kutzko,
KX9X, Media and Public Relations Manager



Spotlight: Boulder, Colorado ARES - A Juggernaut

Boulder County (Colorado) ARES assignments are like a box of chocolates -- you
never know what you'll get. From providing communications for the appearance
of the Dalai Lama to mega-concerts by superstar groups and everything in
between, this versatile and talented group of ARES volunteers respond with
professionalism and with state-of- the-art technologies in order to provide
their served agencies with real-time situational awareness and alternate
communications services. Just this summer alone, BCARES has been asked to
provide voice, data and digital ATV communication services for the Bolder
Boulder 10K run, public safety agencies securing the Dalai Lama visit to the
city and a concert by former members of the Grateful Dead, and most recently
the Cold Springs Fire, a 600-acre wildfire that threatened the mountain
community of Nederland, Colorado.

The Bolder Boulder 10-kilometer run had over 54,000 runners, walkers, and
wheelchair racers, making it the second largest 10K race in the US and the
fifth largest road race in the world. BCARES provided situational awareness
via their pioneering digital ATV systems along the entire course to the finish
line in Colorado University's Folsom Field. The video was sent simultaneously
to race officials, the Boulder Police Department, the Colorado University
Police Department and a federal agency.

The visit of the Dalai Lama to the Colorado University campus packed it with
more 50,000 in attendance. BCARES deployed its ATV assets to monitor the large
crowds and traffic in and around the stadium. This provided the CU and Boulder
PDs and event organizers with live situational awareness at their incident
command posts.

The following week, Folsom Field played host to concerts by original members
of the Grateful Dead. They played to back-to-back sold-out crowds for both
weekend nights. BCARES members again provided their video situational
awareness to the police departments and event organizers, when EMTs were
requested for medical incidents. The live video feed proved invaluable for
event personnel to provide timely and appropriate responses. During football
games in the fall season, the BCARES group uses the CU campus and Folsom Field
as training grounds for their advanced digital ATV ops and test links to
served agencies.



Cold Springs Fire Response

Most recently, BCARES was called out by the Boulder Office of Emergency
Management and the Boulder County Sheriff's Office to provide alternative
radio communications services during the Cold Springs Fire. Affected was
Nederland, a small town west of the City of Boulder, high up in the mountains
and surrounded by State and National forest land. Forced evacuations were
called for and evacuees were sent to three different locations; their large
animals were evacuated to the Boulder County Fairground facilities.

During this incident, no ATV was asked for due to the volatile fire situation
and concern for the safety of BCARES ATV operators. Fire Incident Commanders
closed many of the access roads to and from Nederland in order to provide safe
routes for the wildfire crews being deployed to various hot spots.

The operators did have the opportunity to prove out the BCARES Mountain
Emergency Repeater Network (MERN) that had provided a critical communications
platform for the area during the floods of 2013 that destroyed many
communities to the north and east of Nederland.

During that flood, telephone poles and fiber optic lines were down, but
communication links remained intact between the amateurs and the Boulder EOC
and OEM. "We were able to maintain effective communication between the hills
and the valley, which was critical in meeting citizens' needs," said Mike
Chard, Director of Boulder OEM. "We were able to coordinate air drops of
resources via ham radio -- it was an incredible effort."

The MERN was a project initiated by BCARES EC George Weber, KA?BSA, who
recognized the communication gaps caused by fire damage to communication and
commercial power infrastructure, and planned power outages. Cell phone
coverage is spotty; the Internet and wireless services go down. The MERN, a
network of 2-meter repeaters, was designed to bridge these gaps, and
constructed thanks to the donations of Boulder area hams and other funds. The
installation was performed by BCARES personnel.

Community leaders partnered with BCARES and its instructors and VEs taught
licensing classes and administered the exams that yielded so many new
licensees from the mountain community. BCARES members re-purposed older VHF
radios, and gave them to each new licensee to use in weekly training nets.
These new, local hams have since organized their own inter-mountain radio net;
many have upgraded their licenses and radios. They recently formed their own
ARRL affiliated club -- Indian Peaks Radio Club -- and installed their own
repeater, used in conjunction with the original MERN system.

For the recent fire, these residents-hams of the mountains monitored their
repeater, the MERN and BCARES ops at the Boulder County EOC, as well as local
fire and police frequencies for up-to-the-minute situation reports on fire
parameters, conditions, evacuations, road closures, and weather conditions.
They relayed information to and from their area shelters and sent current
assessments to Boulder County emergency officials. When the wildfire was
upgraded, operators stayed on task.

BCARES recently incorporated the Everbridge System, an app provided to the
group by its served agency and put into service for this wildfire. Everbridge
sends messages to all BCARES members via telephone, text message and email,
and allows emergency managers to track geotagged tweets that contain specific
hashtags and use this information to respond to incidents as they occur. The
app allowed members to respond to duty requests, allowing full staffing
throughout the incident, and freeing the repeaters of these requests in favor
of emergency communications.

In the US, the Boulder County ARES group stands out as a leader in public
event, emergency and disaster communications technology and its use in
diverse, major incidents. - Jack Ciaccia, WM0G, Colorado Section Manager



Letters: Lesson Learned - Mag Mounts, Not So Much

I have a humorous, but notable "Lesson Learned" from last year's PPD Beach 2
Battleship (B2B) iron distance (140 miles) triathlon held in Wilmington, North
Carolina. A local bicycle shop supplied the SAG (Support and Gear) vehicles
and provided repair services along the 112-mile bicycle route of the
triathlon. Each of the five SAG vehicles had a radio amateur assigned to help
coordinate communications along the largely rural route where cell coverage
was intermittent. The bike shop had rented several Ford F-150 pickup trucks to
be used as the SAG vehicles. When we went to place VHF/UHF mag mount antennas
on the trucks' roofs, they literally slipped off! We learned that the new
F-150 trucks have aluminum bodies! We improvised by using either temporary
cowl mounts or steel cookie sheets as ground planes held in place by bungie
cords. Lesson Learned: mag mounts won't work on all vehicles! -- Bill Morine,
N2COP, ARRL Vice Director, Roanoke Division



California RACES/CERT Personnel Assist Seniors During Blackout

Huntington Beach (California) RACES (HBRACES) was activated on Saturday, June
4, 2016 when the power went out at both the Huntington Gardens and Five Points
senior residences. The buildings are each 14 stories tall.

At the Huntington Gardens when the power went out, a generator supplied power
to the hallways and elevators, but there was no power to the individual living
units and telephone system. Consequently, the residents had no lights or any
way of calling 911 in case of an emergency. At the Five Points Senior
Apartments there was complete power failure, with no generator, lights, nor
elevator service. The facility was in complete darkness.

Huntington Beach RACES (Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service) and CERT
(Community Emergency Response Team) members were immediately activated by
Brevyn Mettler, Emergency Services Coordinator. An automated call-up, email
and text alerts went out to all RACES and CERT members. Steve Graboff, W6GOS,
RACES Chief Radio Officer, and Steve Albert, KE6OCE, Assistant Radio Officer,
started a two meter net and logged in responding and available communicators.
Within minutes, operators checked into the net were advised to proceed to the
staging area at the entrance to the City Council chambers at the Huntington
Beach City Hall.

Graboff said "the response to the call to activation by HBRACES was
impressive. The professional communications skills displayed by the operators
were outstanding. The quality of HBRACES training was clearly evident in all
of our responders, including those deployed in the field and others who were
assigned to the incident command post. I am extremely proud of the Huntington
Beach RACES response to this immediate, unexpected, call to activation."

HBRACES communicators were paired with a Huntington Beach CERT responder, and
the pairs were assigned to each floor of the two facilities. With this
arrangement, both communication and rapid response functions would be
available in the event of any emergency or priority situation. This was the
first time Huntington Beach RACES and CERT members had been deployed in pairs,
whereas previous joint deployments had them working cooperatively but not
directly together. They were assigned a 12 hour shift from 6 PM to 6 AM.

Given the loss of electricity with blacked-out buildings, housing many frail
and elderly residents created a dangerous situation, not only for these
residents but also for the volunteers patrolling the floors of the buildings
in the dark, looking and listening for people in need of help, or criminals
looking to take advantage of the situation.

Not only was immediate aid available to the residents, but essential direct
emergency communications to the Huntington Beach Fire and Police Department
was instantaneous. These agencies continually supported the efforts of HBRACES
and the CERT throughout the duration of this incident. Although the Red Cross
typically does not respond to localized power outages, in this case they
dispatched a canteen truck to support the volunteers with snacks and coffee.
The cause of the power failure was a chain reaction fire/explosion in the
underground southern California electric vaults in the area.

Graboff said "the pairing of RACES and CERT brought an impressive set of
skills together to serve the health and welfare of all at the incident site.
Having both organizations working together created a safer environment for the
volunteers since they were not alone. They also brought essential
communications and CERT training to each floor of the buildings. RACES and
CERT worked well together, and I believe this is a response model we will use
again in the future."

Carol Burtis, the CERT Coordinator, said "this event turned into an extremely
well-coordinated mutual-agency response situation and proved the ability to
rapidly stage on the order of 60 people in a very short period of time. The
reward came the following morning when several residents thanked the RACES and
CERT volunteers for being there; one resident said specifically 'that knowing
we were in the hallway was the only thing that allowed her to get sleepy that
night.'"


Lessons Learned

It was found that 12 hours on duty is a long shift, especially in the dark of
night, so in the future RACES may adjust its protocol to a shorter shift time
of 6 hours, staging personnel to rotate every 6 hours and rest in between.

This "no warning" immediate activation was a wake-up call to all Huntington
Beach RACES operators to be sure their "grab and go bags" are always ready
with essential gear, especially flashlights and extra batteries, food, water,
and personal items such as spare reading glasses and a small supply of
personal medications that need to be taken. - Bob Zamalin, WA6VIP, Huntington
Beach, California



Letters: Local Simplex Contests Out There?

Can you solicit information from your readership about FM simplex contests
that are held in their areas? And, possibly 10 meter or other locally oriented
contests in their areas? If readers can send in a basic description and
website URL for such local contests, perhaps a table could be created and
published in the contesting and public service pages of QST somewhere,
promoting greater interest and activity. -- Ward Silver, N0AX [editor's note:
Send any info to Rick Palm, K1CE, for compilation. Thanks!]



K4CJX to Chair a Regional Auxiliary Communications Working Group

The FEMA Disaster Emergency Communications (DEC) Division effects services and
information systems critical to the agency's role in coordinating the Federal
government's response, and support for communications to emergency responders
at all levels of government. The Division helps establish interoperability
during operations anywhere in the country. In 2007, Congress established 10
Regional Emergency Communications Coordination Working Groups (RECCWG) to
support its mission. These groups serve as a coordination point for Federal,
State, local, and Tribal officials as well as private sector service providers
and volunteers at the regional level. RECCWGs address the survivability,
sustainability, operability, and interoperability of emergency communications.
The focus and direction of the RECCWGs is determined by the RECCWG members in
each Region.

Recently, the FEMA Region IV (AL, FL, GA, KY, MS, NC, SC, TN) RECCWG members
formed an auxiliary communications working group to improve the relationship
between agencies and auxiliary communications volunteers. Well-known veteran
Winlink administrator and emergency management/communications advisor Steve
Waterman, K4CJX, a RECCWG member, was asked to chair this working group.
Objectives include providing a model plan for regional agencies wishing to
incorporate qualified auxiliary communications volunteers, mainly Amateur
Radio operators. Other goals are to enhance working relationships among these
volunteers, groups such as ARES, the agencies they seek to support, and other
radio services. The group will study successful Amateur Radio programs to
draft a set of best practices and standards. The group has a diverse,
credentialed membership. It will provide interim and final reports. For more
information, contact Steve Waterman, K4CJX.



San Diego Microwave Network Adds Important New Client

The San Diego microwave network known as HDRENS (High Data Rate EmComm
Network, San Diego) and its partner in Baja, Mexico, CREBC (Club de Radio
Experimentadores de Baja California) have activated a new link in their
extensive microwave private LAN. This LAN employs standard commercial
equipment at 5 GHz, includes over 20 major nodes, 70 IP's and extends for over
70 miles along the coast and inland in southern California and Baja. The
HDRENS-CREBC network has as a main objective "to provide backup communications
for clients in the public health services in the event of a blackout of the
commercial Internet services." The US end operates as a community service and
is funded and maintained by active amateur operators.

The San Diego Blood Bank provides important services to hospitals and other
medical providers throughout the San Diego County area. There is an active ham
radio station at its HQ, and executive, Gloria Lyons, KI6DTA, and volunteer
Communications Coordinator, Roy Gallagher, KR6RG, support the operations
there. CREBC member Mike Burton, XE2/N6KZB, offered that the blood bank could
enhance its communication links in emergencies to their client facilities by
joining the HDRENS-CREBC network; it was quickly accepted.

HDRENS member, RB Smith, WW6RB, with assistance from Fred Nusbickel, N6QKE,
Corbett Stone, KK6DKW, and Ed Sack, W3NRG, evaluated the path between an
HDRENS access point and the blood bank location. While the distance was only
four miles, trees and a bridge posed potential interference, but a test
indicated a connection was possible, and the design and implementation of the
link followed. Data rates of 144 mbps transmitting and receiving were
recorded, and with success at hand, the next steps will include site studies
for links of the three blood bank remote locations. -- Ed Sack, W3NRG,
Coronado, California



Palm Beach County (Florida) ARES Day A Success

Palm Beach County ARES(R) held ARES Day on July 30 at the Palm Beach/Martin
County Red Cross Chapter facility in West Palm Beach. Fifty radio amateurs
attended, and 15 new hams joined the ARES program. Support and representation
was provided by local ham radio clubs, District Emergency Coordinator Charlie
Benn, WB2SNN, South County EC Bob Vastola, KK4ATI, North County EC Chris
Anderson, KK4ENJ, and Central County EC Barry Porter, KB1PA. ARRL Section
Manager Jeff Beals,WA4AW, and Section EC Larry Zimmer, W4LWZ, were in
attendance.

Activities included a demo of emergency power equipment, digital
communications using packet and Winlink, how the National Traffic System and
NTS Digital system work to send emergency message traffic outside of the area,
and a hands-on demonstration of how to build an effective UHF/VHF external
antenna. There were also stations to test, calibrate and program mobile and
portable radios, a demo of what is inside a Red Cross Emergency Response
Vehicle, and demos of portable VHF and HF antennas that can be used in a
deployment. ARES ID cards were given to those interested, and there was lots
of socializing and exchanging of ideas. A list of Palm Beach, Martin and
Broward county 2 meter, 1¬ meter and 70 cm repeaters in all modes was
available, as was the Palm Beach County ARES ICS-205, populated with county
assets and data. Thanks went to the Red Cross and all who attended. Palm Beach
County ARES is now more prepared to meet the needs of our served agencies.
ARES Day was a positive event that energized all who attended. - ARRL Palm
Beach Central County EC Barry Porter, KB1PA

_________________


ARRL -- Your One-Stop Resource for Amateur Radio News and Information

Join or Renew Today! ARRL membership includes QST, Amateur Radio's most
popular and informative journal, delivered to your mailbox each month.

Subscribe to NCJ -- the National Contest Journal. Published bi-monthly,
features articles by top contesters, letters, hints, statistics, scores, NA
Sprint and QSO Parties.

Subscribe to QEX -- A Forum for Communications Experimenters. Published
bi-monthly, features technical articles, construction projects, columns and
other items of interest to radio amateurs and communications professionals.

Free of charge to ARRL members: Subscribe to the ARES E-Letter(monthly public
service and emergency communications news), theARRL Contest Update (bi-weekly
contest newsletter), Division and Section news alerts -- and much more!

Find us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

ARRL offers a wide array of products to enhance your enjoyment of Amateur Radio

Donate to the fund of your choice -- support programs not funded by member
dues!

____________________________________________________________________________


The ARES E-Letter is published on the third Wednesday of each month. ARRL
members may subscribe at no cost or unsubscribe by editing their Member Data
Page as described at http://www.arrl.org/FandES/field/ares-el/.

Copyright (C) 2016 American Radio Relay League, Inc. All Rights Reserved

www.arrl.org

)\/(ark

Always Mount a Scratch Monkey

... "Zalig Kerstfeest en een Gelukkig Nieukjaar." - Dutch
---
 * Origin:  (1:3634/12.73)