June 24, 2007 (.780)
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 hope everyone had a good time on Field Day. We had a great time and only got rained on a couple of times, but us and our equipment stayed dry. Did anyone get or hear the ARRL Field Day Bulletin? We listened for it on both voice and PSK-31, but we never did hear it. I guess it's possible that it wasn't sent out on the times that were on the schedule, or the bands were just so bad that we couldn't hear it. I had hoped to have someone at our Field Day site that could connect to the DAREN Chat Room, and stay near the station during Field Day, but things didn't work out like I planned, and wasn't able to make any Field Day contacts using it. I did see where a couple of stations had connected to the chat room, but I don't know if they had made contact with each other, or anyone else on the system.
I got an E-Mail from Bob Ott, WB8OIF. Bob used to live in Jefferson County and was the ARRL Emergency Coordinator there. Bob helped set up and maintain the Jefferson County NODE/PBBS of JEFFWV/JEFFES several years ago. He's since moved to Berkeley County and is now the Assistant Emergency Coordinator. He doesn't have any Packet equipment now and hasn't been on the DAREN system since his last check-in the DAREN Net on October 31, 1998. Bob has now gotten involved with the Berkeley County Office of Emergency and getting familiar with their Emergency Operations Center. While he was getting familiar with the EOC, he found the DAREN Packet station turned off. He's not for sure how long it's been off, but he has re-established the station, and set up the TNC parameters according to an old DAREN Plan which was still at the EOC. I hadn't been able to connect to the EOC station for a long time. Bob said the Alias' for EOC station NODE/PBBS is BERKES/MRTNES, and he said that he has changed the callsign of the station to KD8ALZ-7. KD8ALZ, is the callsign of the Berkeley County OES Amateur Radio Club. He said that he was pleased to see that Mark Kraham, W8CMK, has been keeping the main Berkeley County DAREN NODE/PBBS of BERKWV/MRTNWV in operation. Bob said that he didn't have any trouble getting into the DAREN system after getting the Berkeley County EOC station back in operation. He said that we may see the KD8ALZ callsign checking into the State Wide DAREN Net from time to time if there is someone at the EOC when the net is in operation. Bob did check into the State Wide DAREN Net this week using the Berkeley County EOC station. I want to thank Bob for getting the station back up and running, and getting back involved with the DAREN system.
There were 58 check-ins in this week's State Wide net. Tyler Lewis, KD8CPP, and Tom Jones, N8NMA, need only one more check-in each to make 50. There was one new callsign on the net this week and that was KD8ALZ, which was mentioned above as the callsign of Berkeley County OES Amateur Radio Club. I hope we see them participating in the net as often as possible.