October 07, 2007 (.795)
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'.
Well, the State Wide ARRL SET (Simulated Emergency Test) was
operated, but the VHF Packet didn't work as well as I hoped.
Stations from the Southern part of the state were having trouble finding
a path to the DAREN Chatroom. Tina, K8TAC, tried for two hours to
get connected, but couldn't get any farther than the Kanawha County
NODE. I opened the DAREN Chatroom Net at about 9:00 am, as soon as
we got our communications vehicle setup for the Safety Fair which was
being held on Saturday also. There were a total of 12 stations
that checked into the net while it was in operation. The stations
that participated in the Chatroom Net were: K8TPH, KC8TUE, KC8VLJ,
KCZLK, KC8ZZS, KD8ALZ, KD8ATF, N8HGL, N8TWV, W3KTW, W8KVK, and WC8EC
(WA8LLM NCS). I couldn't believe how good 75 Meters worked during
the day. There was a few stations that weren't able to hear
everyone on the HF Mountain State Emergency Net, but some traffic did
get passed. Our HF station used an Inverted "V" antenna 28 feet in
the middle that was installed next to a lamp post. We were able to
hear most of the stations very well, and our HF operator, Jeff, KC8EEQ,
ended up being the Net Control Station. Jeff has been the NCS for
a lot of VHF nets, but had never been the NCS for an HF net, so he
thinks he may have screwed up a few times. I told him that it
doesn't make any difference what net you're the NCS for, the NCS runs
the net his way, and that his way is the right way. Since we had
several messages to send to the simulated EOC in Charleston, we wanted
to send them by Packet, but were unable to send them since Tina was not
able to get into the Chatroom net. We ended up sending the
messages by Packet to one of the Winlink 2000 Telnet NODEs to the
internet. The SET let me see how the Chatroom would work when
several stations are connected. Any messages sent by anyone on the
net, will be sent to all stations on the net, and it will take a long
time to complete the task. If there's a message that is for all
the participates on the net, that would be okay, but if a message needs
to be sent to just one other station, it SHOULD NOT be sent using the
Chatroom. The two stations should connect to each other direct and
send the traffic. Another way would be to have the traffic posted
on a PBBS of choice, and tell the receiving station where it's at.
The Chatroom should o coordinate how and where the traffic should be
sent. I felt the SET was a success even if things didn't go as
planned, that's what a drill or exercise is for. Exercises are to
let you know what will work, what won't work, or doesn't work very well,
and then come up with a way to make it work.
There was 61 check-ins to this week's State Wide DAREN Net. Terry
and Denise Mills, KC8TUE and KC8TUF, who have been checking into the net
since October 19, 2002, have completed 200 check-ins and will be
receiving their certificates. Ron Wilson, K8RWW, needs only one more
check-in to make 150. There was one station that checked into the
net with the callsign of "NOCALL-14". The dash 14 tells me they
went through two NODEs to get checked in at about 7:53 pm Saturday
evening. I saw it checking in, and tried to connect back with no
success. If you checked into the net at about that time, don't see
you callsign on this week's Net Announcement, and think it may be yours,
let me know so that I can update your check-in records. I won't
tell who it was.