April 08, 2007 (.769)
Kenneth Harris WA8LLM (304) 679-3470 wa8llm@yahoo.com
WOOD COUNTY EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS, P.O. BOX 3328, PARKERSBURG, WV 26103 http://www.wc8ec.com
DAREN News, are articles and information about the Digital Amateur Radio "Emergency" Network of WV, which operates on 145.69 Mhz. Anyone having any information about DAREN, or Amateur Radio in general, and would like to share it with others, may send it to WA8LLM @ PKBGWV on 145.69 MHz A State Wide DAREN NET is operated every Saturday from 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm. DAREN Net Announcements, showing the MAIN NCS, ALTERNATE NCS, NODEs accessible to both, and the previous week's check-ins, are posted by Thursday on most of the Main county DAREN PBBS'.
I got the Calhoun County Health Packet and Voice stations installed on Wednesday, but I'm unable to connect to any of the surrounding county DAREN NODE locations from the Health Department. Looks like it's on a hilltop, but it's surrounded by higher hills. Also with the two Meter voice station, I can only bring up a couple of repeaters. After I get the other four county Health Department stations installed, I'll go back to Calhoun County and figure out a way of making them work. After we got the Calhoun County stations installed, we made a trip to the Roane County and Wirt County locations to survey the installations there. Our plans were to install one location a week on Wednesdays, but it looks like the Roane and Wirt County stations won't take that long, and this Wednesday I have a meeting to go to, so we decided to go back to Roane and Wirt Counties on Tuesday to install those stations.
On Saturday I installed three Remote Receivers for the 147.255 MHz, Wood County Emergency Communications voice repeater. The repeater has the capability of having eight Remote Receivers, but for the past few months it's only been operating with two receivers out of the six that had been operational. One receiver must have had a near by lightening hit and lost the transceiver micro- processor. The top part of the antenna at one site was missing, and when I got it fixed the radio wouldn't work. One Remote Receiver had to be shut down due to low audio, and the last one, I'm not sure what's wrong with it. Now that Spring is here, and Summer is coming, I need to start going to some of the other tower sites and repair problems. I hope that with the installation of one of the new Remote Receivers at the Wirt County tower site, I'll be able to get into the repeater from the Calhoun County Health Department station.
That's all the news that I have this week, if you have anything you want to talk about let me know.
There were 73 check-ins to this week's State Wide DAREN Net. My son Kevin Harris, KC8OXY, who's been participating in the net since July 1, 2000, has completed 350 check-ins. Larry Dale, KF8NW, who's been participating, on and off, in the net since May 27, 993, has completed 50 check-ins. Both of these operators will be receiving their certificates. John Western, KC8ODI, needs only one more check-in to make 150. There was one station that checked into the net with the callsign o "NOCALL-14". The "NOCALL" station checked in at about 8:22 pm on Saturday. If you don't see your callsign on this week's State Wide DAREN Net Announcement, and think it may be yours, let me know so that I can update your check-in participation.