Wood County
Emergency Communications

Serving Wood County West Virginia and surrounding areas

DAREN News

August 12, 2007                  (.787)

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 received a telephone call from Bill Wetzel, WD5GKE, in reference to the Wetzel County NODE/PBBS of WETZWV/NMARWV.  Bill said that he went to the tower site to check on the station.  When he got to the site he found all of the equipment, except the power supply was off.  He was able to turn on only one radio and one TNC of the two Packet stations which are there.  We're not for sure what caused all the equipment to be off, but the DAREN station is still not in operation.  I won't have time to go to the tower site this week due to getting ready for the Parkersburg Homecoming and Parkersburg Half Marathon which will be this coming weekend.  I'm planning on going to the tower site on Monday, August 20th, to see if I can get the DAREN station back on the air and remove the other Packet station from the site.
 
I got a message from Ted Jacobson, W8KVK, who's been trying to get more traffic to be passed on the DAREN system.  Ted Says that in the interest of better integrating DAREN into regional traffic handling, it may be useful to know in advance of accepting a piece of traffic whether there is a "monitored" DAREN PBBS serving the destination city/zip code.  Ted says that he has whipped up a simple index of 87 West Virginia towns/zip codes in 8 counties based on the list of counties with active supervising monitor stations, who have committed to monitoring their local PBBS on a regular basis, and whose names have been published in the "DAREN News".  This index may also help DAREN users route traffic within the network itself, as well as to serve as a Public Relations tool to promote the important traffic handling resource DAREN provides.  Ted says that you can look at the list of ZIP Codes on his website of: http://w8kvk.com/darenzips.  I want to thank Ted for his help in making the DAREN system more useful to all kinds NTS, MARS, Red Cross, CAP, etc. traffic. Any other operators who want to support the DAREN system by committing to pick up, and deliver any messages, which are posted on PBBSs they monitor in their area, should send me a message to let me know what they are.
 
were 57 check-ins to this week's State Wide DAREN Net.  Charles King, KB8YIT, who's been participating in the net since February 19, 2000, has completed 300 check-ins.  Charles will be receiving his certificate as soon as I get my certificate computer back in operation.  There was one station that checked into the net this week with the callsign of NOCALL-14.  The dash 14 tells me the station went through two NODEs to get to the Net Control Station. If you don't see your callsign on this week's Net Announcement, and think that it may be your's, send me a message so that I can update your check-in records.