November 18, 2007 (.801)
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'.
(Continued from last week)
Last week I ran out of space telling about a communications exercise
that will be held here in Wood County on Saturday, December 8th.
I've been in contact with Tina Clark, K8TAC, and the WV ARRL Section
Emergency Coordinator about the exercise. She has notified all of
the WV District Emergency Coordinators and County Emergency Coordinators
about the event. Tina is hoping to get at least eight operators
that will act as Net Control Stations, and hopes to have the Mountain
State Emergency Net opened the whole time. The Wood County
Emergency Communications group will be there with as many Amateur Radio
operators as we can get. For the Amateur Radio part of the
exercise, we're planning to send messages to as many counties as we can
either to the County OES Director, 911 Center, Red Cross, Health
Departments, or other agencies as possible. Since the exercise
will run for about eight hours, we should be able to work out any
problems that we might run into. The DAREN Chatroom Net will be in
operation again, but this time I think the problems that we found during
the October 6th Simulated Emergency Test, have been corrected.
Anyone that can participate in the exercise is welcome. You don't
have to participate all day, but I would like for you to check into one,
or both, of the nets sometime during the exercise, and pickup and/or
pass a piece of traffic. If you don't know who you’re Emergency
Services Director, Red Cross representative, 911 Director, or other
Public Safety representative is, now would be the time to introduce them
to Amateur Radio. After a class on the ARRL RADIOGRAM that I
taught yesterday, I held a short class on how to use the DAREN Chatroom
Net. We worked on some procedures that I think will work well with the
system, but it may take a little practice. The one thing you need
to have is a little patience, since Packet Radio isn't the fastest mode
in the world. While operating in the Net Chatroom, you may be
sitting for awhile with nothing to do. The DAREN Chatroom Net is
just like any other net, you don't transmit until you're directed to, by
the Net Control Station. Even though it's called a Chatroom, the
reason you don't want to hold a conversation with another station is
because everything you transmit has to go to all stations that are on
the net, and, that takes up a lot of time. I'll be writing up a
net procedure and post it on the DAREN PBBSs. If you have any
suggestions let me know, we have about three weeks.
There were 53 check-ins again to this week's state Wide DAREN Net.
My wife Dot Harris, KC8HAI, needs only one more check-in to make 550.
I want to welcome Jeff Scott, KC8EEQ, back to the DAREN Net. Jeff
has been missing since October 6, 2001. Of course, Jeff had a
packet station in front of him at an ARRL RADIOGRAM class that I held
yesterday, followed by a class on how to use the DAREN Chatroom.
There was one station that checked into the net yesterday with the
callsign of NOCALL-15. On my backup log he NOCALL-15 had
digipeated through the RITCWV NODE. I got a message from Gene Roy,
N8ER, and saying that he saw a NOCALL connect to the BARBWV NODE at the
same time. If you checked into the net at around Noon on Saturday
by connecting to the BARBWV NODE, and then digipeating through the
RITCWV NODE, don't see your call on this coming week's Net Announcement,
and think it may have been you, send me a message so that I can correct
your net participation report. No one will know but me.