Wood County
Emergency Communications

Serving Wood County West Virginia and surrounding areas

DAREN News

September 09, 2007                  (.791)

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'.

Tim Davis, KC8TYK, was able to program the Wood County APRS Digipeater so that it would be a part of the APRS system.  The BEACONs from the station have been seen by several other stations in the system.
 
As far as I know, the Simulated Emergency Test (SET), is still scheduled for October 6th.  There was some discussion on the Mountain State Emergency Net Thursday about changing the date to October 13th.  Tina Clark, K8TAC, the Section Emergency Coordinator, wants all District Emergency Coordinators and County Emergency Coordinators to make plans on what they want to do during the SET.  The scenario of the SET is Western Migration which will be a mass of people leaving the Washington DC/Northern Virginia area in a major emergency.
 
The monthly ARES DAREN Chatroom Net was held on Thursday during the West Virginia FONE Net, and the Mountain State Emergency Net.  There was eight participates in the net this month.  The participates on the net, besides myself were:  KD8CPP, W3JTW, KC8TUE, KB8QPW, W8OO, KC8ODI, and N8HGL.  An ARRL test RADIOGRAM message was sent to the participates of the net to demonstrate how it would work during drills, and in a real emergency.  The only problem with sending a message through the Chatroom is the amount of time that it takes to transmit the message.  You can't select who you want to send a message to, so the message has to go to everyone on the net.  The more participates there are on the net, the more time it will take.  That makes it important that members of the net not try to talk to one another unless they first get permission from the Net Control Station.  If one station talks to another station during the net, while a message is being sent, their conversation will be inserted into that message, and the person receiving the message will have to clean it up before delivering it.  It's best to type your messages up ahead of time, and upload it to save the amount of time you're sending traffic.  If you do have to type your messages on the air, be sure to have your hard copy handy so you can copy from it.  Another item that you must remember when typing in the Chatroom, is to press an a few spaces before the end of the screen line.  If you don't press an before reaching the end of the screen line (which is usually about 80 characters), what you type will try to wrap around to the next line, but it will be lost in never-never land.  It will take a little practice, but it's easy to do.  I want to thank all of the stations that participated in the ARES DAREN Chatroom Net Thursday, and hope you, and others will participate in the October 4th Net.  The ARES DAREN Chatroom Net will be in operation on October 6th during the State Wide Simulated Emergency Test on October 6th.  You can use the net to pass your traffic, and to coordinate other activities if you have problems operating on the HF Nets that will be in operation.
 
There were 60 check-ins to this week's State Wide DAREN Net.  Bob Ott, WB8OIF, who's been participating in the net since June 26, 1993, has completed 100 check-ins and will be receiving his certificate.  Since things are slowing down a bit, I think I will spend some time on my certificate computer.