DAREN of WV News February 1, 2009 (.864)
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, or to my E-Mail: wa8llm@yahoo.com.A State Wide DAREN NET is operated every Saturday from 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm, and lately, before and after those hours. The DAREN Net Announcement, 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'. The DAREN News can also be found on the wc8ec.com website.
Not much DAREN News this week, so I'll just ramble on about something.
If you are an ARRL Member do you have your E-Mail listed on the ARRL web site? Is it up to date? You may be missing a lot of good information if you're not getting the E-Mails they send out to all ARRL members. There are ARRL Bulletins, ARRL Newsletters, ARRL E-Letters, special bulletins, and a lot more. If you haven't checked into the ARRL Web Site lately, you might want to do it and update you E-Mail address so you can start receiving some good information. Also tell everyone you talk to and put in your club Newsletters. Let those on your Radio Nets know they should do it also.
Well, the way I look at it, come tomorrow, we only have six more weeks of winter left, it doesn't make much difference what the groundhog says. That means we need to start getting everything ready for the summer activities. Now would be a good time to plan what you're going to do for Field Day. Are you going to be operating from your regular Field Day site, or are you going to try some place else. Several years ago when a group of us would operate Field Day, we picked a different location each year. Some groups figure that if a disaster was to happen they would have their operating procedures down pat as to where to set up their antennas, their generator, operating tents, etc. We figured that by changing locations each year we would have a better idea of how to set up in a real disaster, in case we couldn't get to our Field Day site, since we weren't relying on just one location. What would happen if you couldn't get to your regular operating site, or had to go out of town to provide emergency communications for someone else? Would you still be able to install you antennas if you have to rely on trees to support those antennas? Now our communications group doesn't rely on anything at a Field Day site except the ground to stand on. We could probably set up on a river barge if we had to. That means that we have the equipment to set up our antennas whether we are on dirt, concrete, blacktop, or steel. The only thing that we would have a problem with is ground rods, and a grounding system. For several years we have played with grounding systems at our Field Days site, and the only thing I can tell a difference in is interference between operating systems. Without a good grounding system there may be a little interference between radios. I’m not saying that grounding isn't needed, but if you can do without it in an actual emergency or disaster don't worry about it. But, if you are operating during the possibility of storms with lightening, you should have a good ground system. But if you're operating during a lightning storm, you might want to have your head examined. It’s not worth getting killed trying to provide communications. During actual emergencies or disasters not having a good ground shouldn't matter.
There were 65 check-ins again to this week's State Wide DAREN Net.Ray Gorrell, WV8RG, needs only one more check-in to make 750