West Texas Section News November 2010

11/22/2010

News From Around West Texas.

Hello Neighbors,

Last month’s WTX Newsletter contained a bit of ham radio trivia about Lionel keys that I unabashedly stole from the San Angelo ARC Newsletter. I received several interesting comments about the Lionel J36 bugs. One WTX ham even sent me a picture of a Lionel key that he was restoring. Maybe a restored key display would make a nice attraction the Midland Hamfest? Still no bites on last month’s teaser about the Hollywood actress that is credited with inventing technology that made cell phones possible. How about it guys?

Speaking of the Midland Hamfest, the Midland club recently had their first planning meeting for next year’s Hamfest. A quality hamfest requires a lot of hard work and advanced planning by the entire club. It certainly involves more then a couple of meetings over coffee at the DQ. The Midland club has it figured out. The 2011 West Texas ARRL Section Convention will be held in conjunction with Midland’s St. Patrick’s Day Hamfest.

Last month’s Section News probably seemed a little disjointed. It was pretty rushed and several typos slipped by my editing. I really goofed in one case when I attempted to give the West Texas Repeater Association publicity for their next quarterly meeting and it came out as some type of “mystery” meeting at the K5WPH clubhouse. In addition, some of my comments were edited out before you received the newsletter. Better luck with this month’s issue.

Thanks to Clay, K5TRW, I am now receiving the El Paso ARC Newsletter. I was really missing my monthly dose of Charlie’s Whistle. This month Charlie discussed the Novice License and pointed to an article from the November 1956 issue of QST that is still very appropriate to amateur radio in 2010. An updated version of the QST article is at http://kb6nu.com/your-novice-accent/ . The El Paso ARC had a successful equipment auction that will help with their taxes. They are also making plans for their Thanksgiving Dinner fundraiser. For those clubs that have to pay property taxes on their clubhouse, fundraising is a year-round job.

Congratulations to Dr. David Woolweaver (K5RAV) and John Stratton (N5AUS) on their successful re-election as Director and Vice-Director of the ARRL West Gulf Division. Pre-filing has already begun for the upcoming session of the Texas Legislature. Your Leadership Team is already making plans to both protect and advance the interest of amateur radio in the upcoming legislative session.

Comments cut short this month to allow room for the Simulated Emergency Test summary from the Tom Green County ARES. Each year I am asked what is the ARRL SET, how do we participate, etc. The attached report from Mike Dominy, KD5URW Tom Green EC, is an excellent example of how to plan and conduct a successful SET.

Happy Turkey Day,

John Dyer

AE5B

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AMATEUR RADIO EMERGENCY SERVICE

Monthly Section Emergency Coordinator Report to ARRL Headquarters

ARRL Section: West Texas Month: October Year: 2010

Total # of ARES members: 310 Change since last month: +3

DEC's/EC's and Net reporting this month 18: ARES nets active: 13 Number with NTS liaison: 3

Calls of DEC's/EC's reporting: W5NPR, KM5VM, W5ZOX, KD5HYB, KE5UAL, NL7C, WT5C,

KD5KBU, KJ5DX, KC5NHV, KD4LXC, N5SQK, KD5URW, N5DO, AE5SN, KE5NYB, KC5NOX, KE5SXT

Number of drills, tests and training sessions this month: 14 Man Hours: 194

Number of public service events this month: 7 Man hours: 664

Number of emergency operations this month: 4 Man hours: 17.5

Total number of ARES operations this month: 23 Total Man hours: 875.5

Comments SEC:

October was an event-filled month. Many thru out the WTX area participated in public service events,. Weather it is a bike race, balloon event, foot race, air show, car race, demonstration at a local mall, SET Drill or working with scouts at the JOTA event we are making an impact. Our hobby benefits greatly from this. Keep up the good work. On the emergency side we still have managed to have some severe weather which spawned a tornado or two. Talking with some of the EC's it appears we are heading into some severe fire conditions. As amateur radio operators, we are in a good position to report sightings and summon help. This is also the time of the year we do our SET Drills. Be sure to get your Set Drill reports in. Since this is the last report before Thanksgiving may each and everyone have a great time and be sure to add your thanks for a great hobby. J.T. Caldwell WA5ZFH West Texas Section Emergency Coordinator

Following Comments taken from EC Monthly Reports:

Taylor, County:

We have on-going ARES training nets on the 146.760 repeater on Tuesday nights. We have been averaging about 18 checkins. We are encouraging people to be net control operators, especially if they have never done that before. This will allow everyone (that is willing to participate) to have some training at being the NCS.WB5EKW – Howard, took us through the newly installed equipment at Hendrick Medical Center EOC. He has done 90% of the work to get this operational. Installed there are HF, VHF/UHF, & D-Star radios. These are “state of the art”. We are in the process of selecting folks to be authorized to access the Hendrick Medical Center EOC. Howard is also working to install a D-Star radio at the Abilene/Taylor County EOC. We are in the planning stages of a very large state sponsored communication exercise. This exercise will be in the Brownwood area in July 2010. It will involve ham operators, Brownwood emergency management officials, State of Texas, and Texas Military forces. I am working to get hams involved especially with the hospital aspect so we can tie together Brownwood Medical Center, Hendrick Medical Center, and one of the hospitals in San Angelo via ham radio links. There will

be on-going planning meetings for this exercise. This exercise should give me an opportunity to

get my COMM-L task book signed off on and then I’ll be a state certified Comm-L. I am also working on a communication exercise that will be in the Mitchell County area and will involve

Scurry county. Our first planning meeting will be in November. We are working with the City of Abilene to upgrade the computers in the EOC radio room. These are the ones we use during severe weather nets.Signature: Bill Shaw Title: Taylor County EC Call sign: KJ5DX

Nolan County

Nolan County ARES handled communications for the Nolan County Health Department during an Emergency Management Drill in Roscoe Texas. Working with Taylor County Ares and Scurry County Emergency Management, We set a communication link between Nolan County, Taylor County, and Scurry County Officials via 2 meter and 70cm Amateur Radio Frequencies.

Signature: Gary Armstrong Title: Nolan County EC Call sign: KC5NOX

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Silent Key Report

Howard Palmer WA5ZQX Midland

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West Texas Net Reports Oct 2010

Name/sessions/checkins 
El Paso Area
 WTRA Monday Night Net: 4/58
 Thursday Night SCARC Net: 4/49
 QCWA Chapter 64 Net: 5/34
Big Bend Area
 Big Bend Emergency Net: 5/204

 Big Bend 2 Meter Net 5/52
San Angelo Area 
 Concho Valley 2 Meter Net:  4/47
 Tom Green ARES Net: 4/69
Panhandle Area 
 Panhandle Amateur Information Net: 4/38
 Panhandle ARES Net: 1/5
Taylor County ARES Net 4/61
 

Coming Events  

Jan 8 West Texas Repeater Association Fall Quarterly Meeting at K5WPH Clubhouse

March 19 56^th Annual St. Patrick’s Day Hamfest and West Texas Section ARRL Convention http://www.w5qgg.org/marc/hamfest.html

June 10-11 ARRL National Convention (Ham-Com 2011) http://www.hamcom.org/

Big Bend Emergency Net/ West Texas Section Net 3922 Khz Sunday at 8:30 AM CDT
 
 

ARRL Simulated Emergency Test (SET) 2010

The following is a quick summary of the Tom Green County Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARES) 2010 ARRL Simulated Emergency Test (SET).

This is a nationwide exercise in emergency communications, administered by ARRL Emergency Coordinators and Net Managers. The main purpose for the SET is to give local area amateur radio operators an opportunity to focus on their emergency communications capability within their community while interacting with NTS nets. This year’s SET weekend for the TGC-ARES group was held on 30 October 2010.

The following is a brief outline of what we did before, during and after the SET and some of the scorecard results for the group.

1. The Tom Green County ARES group members hold several meetings to briefly outline the upcoming SET activities and to come up with a group idea on what they wished to see and do during this years SET.  

2. This year the group members decided to work on net messages and on radio communications between several of the City of San Angelo shelter locations and the Emergency Operations Center (EOC), located at Mathis Field Airport (San Angelo Regional Airport).

3. The group worked on an emergency situation that involved the evacuation of families from the Texas Gulf coast area, due to a major hurricane coming ashore along the coast line just south of the Corpus Christi area.

4. Teams where assigned a shelter and each team worked on their own messages, along with a few messages on behalf of some of the served agencies (i.e., Red Cross, National Weather Service, and OEM). 

5. The City of San Angelo/Tom Green County Office of Emergency Management (OEM) approved the use of the EOC in which to use as the primary communications center, for net control from the amateur radio room, within the EOC. 

6. The club house of the San Angelo Amateur Radio Club (SAARC) was the alternate back-up communications site for the SET.

7. The announcement, over the primary exercise net frequency (147.300 PL 88.5), about the exercise was activated at 0900 hours on the 30 of October 2010.

8. Each of the assigned shelter radio teams where notified of the exercise, dispatched and made ready to serve those shelter agencies.

9. Each of the designated shelter stations would originate their messages on behalf of the served agencies.

10. Test messages simulating requests for medical supplies, medical support, additional shelter materials, shelter request for pets, transportation request for transfer of evacuees, Amber type alert for a lost child and repairs crews to fix plumbing problems at one shelter, where just a few of the messages.

11. Additional simulated emergency messages from the EOC to all of the shelters were weather related, thanks to the San Angelo National Weather Service, due to the outflow of the hurricane coming within the Concho Valley area. The messages covered severe storms, possible tornados and flooding within the county and city area.

12. Tactical simplex communications for the served agencies was also emphasized.

13. Two local area repeaters, one VHF (147.300 Pl 88.5) and one UHF (444.350 PL 162.2), where used as part of the traffic net.

14. Two simplex frequencies, 146.430 and 146.550, were used in the passing of messages between the shelters to the EOC and between each of the shelters.

14. Contacts where also made on HF, 7260 MHz, from one of the shelter stations to the EOC.

15. All shelter stations were conducted on emergency-only basis, with one shelter station on generator power and one on solar power, with the additional stations running on HTs or mobiles on battery power.

16. Each of the shelter stations worked off of different antennas, along with their HTs and mobiles during the exercise.

17. After the completion of the SET, for each of the shelter stations, the teams where requested to stand down and to proceed to the club house for the after-action summary.

18. The club house back-up station, manned by Hughbert / KC5NPC, was setting up the BBQ pit for the group to cook up some hamburgers, sausage and other fixings for lunch before we have the after-action summary.

19. After a good lunch, the group members, from all of the shelter assigned teams, worked on an after action summary for the SET to submit to the SEC, DEC and to ARRL for this years Tom Green County ARES Simulated Emergency Test (SET) for 2010.

16. The exercise lasted from 0900 hours to 1115 hours with the following information:

Total number of Tom Green County ARES group members participated - 11

Number of new amateurs (licensed since 2005) - 3

Number of third party messages on behalf of served agencies - 39

Tactical communications conducted on behalf of served agencies - 2.5 hours

Number of stations on emergency power during test - 12

Dual membership in ARES and RACES – 3

Number of different agencies for which communications was provided – 4

The following is a list of team members for each of the shelters that the group worked at during this exercise:

City of San Angelo Coliseum (Shelter #1) – Bob Heiser / W7IKT & Carol Heiser / N5CBQ

McNease Convention Center (Shelter #2) – Gary Chaffin / W5ETJ & Matt Healy / W5MAT

Central High School (Shelter #3) – Marcus Oquin / KF5GLC & Gary Pittman / KE5TXL

Lakeview High School (Shelter #4) – Drew Brath / N5YDA & Martin Diaz / KF5IKN

At the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) for the primary operations center was Mike Dominy / KD5URW & Tom Austin / K4OTM

This years SET, for the TGC-ARES group, was a good exercise for this group on what we can do during an emergency. We find out the strengths and weaknesses of the group and what the local area communications would be like to the different shelters and to the EOC, when the time came for the need of this group. This also provided a good public demonstration to the many served agencies, that we work with, such as the Red Cross, the Emergency Management Office, National Weather Service and the news media.

It is the value to the public that Amateur Radio provides, particularly in time of need of emergency communications, that we will get though when all else fails. But the main thing in the SET is to help all radio amateurs gain experience in communications using standard procedures and a variety of modes under simulated emergency conditions, for you may never know when we may have that big one and for that, we must be ready.

Signed as such on this date by me as the Tom Green County Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) Emergency Coordinator:

73 de

Mike Dominy

Tom Green County ARES Emergency Coordinator