ARES
Delaware County ARES
Red Cross National Exercise
We did fairly well for the exercise! Thanks to all who participated by sending messages or
checking into nets. Thanks to Joe, K8MP, for jumping in to assist at the very busy ARC station.
Preparation for the exercise created the opportunity to make some significant advances in the
ARC station itself. (These are detailed in the ARC Station page). We now have a solid digital HF
station i the Kenwood 590, and it did well for us after some last-minute software fumbling from
yours truly. We did have some simplex traffic that we were able to relay from Union and Marion
counties. However, we discovered that we were not able to copy the VHF simplex net initiated by
Franklin County- it also served as the District 7 net- so we were not able to check in. We might
consider some station upgrades that would fix that-- for instance, a second tower with a solid
dual-band beam that we could use. (We have the tower basics, we have a lightweight rotor and
control cable and coax. ) This would enhance our ability to both connect ourselves and relay
outlying counties into the district net. This is an important aspect of off-grid communications,
and our Central Ohio district is a late-comer to that party. Most other districts have a designated
repeater and simplex net frequency. It’s up to us to make that workable for Delaware County!
So what? Well, consider that just this week a number of small companies, three ~hospitals~ and
world-wide Honda corporation were all victims of cyber attacks In the case of Honda, their IT
division was faced with rebuilding 2,000 servers (!!) and employees couldn’t even use their cards
to get into the buildings. Now, remember all the drills we’ve had that have in some way involved
Internet loss? Guess what- a well-aimed cyber attack of this very same nature could drop a
power grid, paralyze communications nodes, or interfere with safety communications. Any of
that would very well involved amateur radio as an off-grid alternative. Are you ready?
Ohio ARES - Number 2 nationally in SET
I’m very proud of all of you ARES members! Our total
score was a strong #2 in national scoring from ARRL.
Section Manager Scott Yonally broke the news:
In an article just published in the July issue of QST the
Ohio Section has really shown through. We placed 2 in
the country. We were 1st in the Great Lakes Division and
we placed 4th in the country for Section and Local Nets.
Wow… What an accomplishment this is. I want to
congratulate eveyrone in the Ohio Section for a fantastic
2019 year not only in ARES but as a team!
I completely agree! By the way, I have NO idea what
Alabama was doing. :-)
Red Cross Exercise a Success
Ohio ARES looked really good to the American Red Cross for our joint traffic exercise. I was
most pleased with how many of us could put together a WinLink pathway! We need to grab
onto that mode and enhance our abilities! It’s the software-di=u-jure for emergency
communicating! We received this recap from our Red Cross collector Ron Doyle, N8VAQR:
Bottom line for Ohio: I thought we were very successful. We were able to send messages and
receive confirmations which was our main objective. That says a lot about our equipment and
how ready we are. I am a very strong believer in using our tools on a regular basis to be sure
our equipment is working and what we can do to better our equipment. Also we need to be
confident that we know what how to use our tools.
We had about 130 participants over the state. 4 of those were Red Cross people. about 300
messages were transferred. We had about 30% of participants on Mains and 70% on emergency
power. A lot of the participants on Mains power had emergency power available. I think most of
the participants used VHF/UHF. We did have a few use HF.
I was the focal point for Montgomery and Greene counties so they sent their messages to me
and I would sent confirmations back. I had about 20 people send me 6409's. I'm very pleased
that other district ECs where getting the 6409's and collecting data for me because I wouldn't
have been able to handle 130 messages in the time frame we had. Thanks GUYS!
UHF/VHF worked very well, I was very impressed. I think we may have had some people use
repeaters. I wasn't so sure about that idea when I first heard about it but I participated in a net
with Greene County ARES and with the voice coordination going on it was very clear to other
people on the repeater what was going on and the time to send a form wasn't excessive so I was
pleased how that worked. When some of the people couldn't get to an RMS node the repeaters
or simplex and flmsg/fldigi worked great.
I know that a number of the ARES people were new to winlink and I found that they were all
interested in learning how to use it. I was concerned that people would be hesitant since fldigi
was the main way ARES sent messages in a lot of cases and that was not the case with the
people I talked to. Again Thanks!
Amateur Radio is more than
a hobby- it becomes an
important service when
other forms of
communication fail. It’s up
to all of us to stay ready,
stay trained, and stay
available. We could be
required on a moment’s
notice.
Delaware County ARES is part of the
national ARRL program. We rely on
our volunteers. We operate during
several large public events including
the national-level Ironman
competition.
We hold a radio net on the 145.19
repeater (no tone) on the first
Thursday of every month at 8PM.
We hold a training meeting on the
second Thursday of every month at
7:30 usually at the Red Cross building.
All amateurs are invited!
For information, contact Stan, N8BHL
the Delaware County Emergency
Coordinator, or Joe, K8MP or Craig,
W8CR.