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Next S.A.R.A. Meeting on Thursday, June 19th  at the Doylestown
Village hall.

Fox Hunt?

As you may know, a Foxhunt was scheduled for Saturday, May 24, and was cancelled.  Bryan, KC8DKG, would like input on rescheduling the event.  The re

SARA Helps Red Cross

    On Saturday, May 17th 1997 a joint mock disaster exercise was held involving many agencies from Lorain, Medina, and Cuyahoga counties.  The mock disaster scenario was a "Class-3" level emergency caused by a tanker-truck which flipped over in the village of Columbia Station, spilling part of its cargo of Methyl Iso-Cyanate--a very lethal chemical.  Columbia Station's Fire Department responded to the scene, determined that the situation was very dangerous, and requested help from Haz-Mat teams from Lorain, Cuyahoga, and Medina counties.  The Lorain and Medina county Emergency Management Agencies were notified of the situation.  The scene commander ordered the evacuation of around a hundred people in the area and the EMA called in the Red Cross to open evacuation shelters.
    As Communications Chairman for the Medina Co. Chapter, I was asked to set up communications between the incident site, the incident command center, several area hospitals, and the Red Cross shelters.  I had contacted several SARA members and asked them to participate in the exercise.  After many nose counts and several false starts, the busloads of "evacuees" were sent to the Red Cross shelters in Lorain and Medina Counties.  Traffic was then passed via Amateur Radio concerning health and welfare of the evacuees, isolation precautions, antidotes, and treatment of contaminated victims.
    The Red Cross is allocated a block of frequencies just below the 6-meter band.  We found out that although the mobile radios we had at our disposal worked very well, the hand-held radios were useless beyond a 1 or 2 mile radius.  Amateur radio saved the day as if we would have had to relied on our HT's we would have really been in a world of hurt!  A net was set up on the 147.15 repeater, and SARA's amateurs passed a large volume of traffic in an orderly--and most importantly--error-free and disciplined manner.  I would especially like to commend Del, N8OFP and Carol, N8SIN who relayed the antidote and treatment instructions to the shelter staff.  I finally broke the Executive Director of the Medina Co. Chapter of the Red Cross of her "mic. fright" by handing her the microphone and telling her to start passing traffic.  She passed a whole page of text to Del and Carol who copied it without error--I guess that net participation pay off.  The volunteers from Lorain county spoke too fast and copied too slow and were finally reduced to spelling out entire sentences.  The message that took SARA 2 1/2 minutes to pass took the other shelter almost 10 minutes to pass.  Had this been an actual emergency, human health and safety could have been severely compromised.

    In the final de-briefing, Medina County was commended on many things, among them being communications.  Steve, KC8DJV and I monitored all of the Public Service radio traffic that we could, and we both thought that the amateur radio traffic was passed in a more efficient manner.  Two very important things were factors in this ability--Number one was that as radio operators we are used to it and it comes almost as a second nature, number two is the fact that we were all coordinated on one frequency and had an orderly net set up.  I started to count the number of different frequencies that the different agencies were trying to communicate on, and finally realized that it really didn't matter how many radios and how many frequencies they were allocated, as none of them had any one channel in common except the statewide CD frequency which quickly became over-loaded.
    After the exercise was over and all of the shelters closed, we were treated to some fine (?) shelter food and sent home.  All of us except Brian, KC8DKG were treated to a ride back to Medina in the Red Cross Emergency Response Vehicle driven by yours truly.  Once we got back to Medina we all crammed into the executive director's (Beth's) Toyota for an unforgettable ride back to the Chapter--(Brian was the smart one)!
    I would like to take this time to thank all of the amateurs who participated for the excellent job they did.  We made a lasting impression with all of the agencies in the exercise--especially the Red Cross.  I am comforted by the fact that if the real thing ever strikes that SARA will be ready and able to help.  As a matter of fact, SARA is listed in the Red Cross disaster plan as a primary communications resource.  Thanks again to N8SIN, N8OFP, KC8DKG, and KC8DJV.  Hope to see everyone next year and if anyone is interested in participating, please let me know!

Here are some scanner frequencies to monitor :

Medina Red Cross Channel #1 47.54 MHz  (WPJW320)
American Red Cross (National) 47.42 MHz
Ohio Civil Defense (Statewide) 155.805 MHz

73's de KB8UHU, Bob

Status of the Doylestown Water Tower Replacement

As was reported in the April issue of the Salami Merchant, Doylestown will be replacing the water tower that currently is the site of SARA's 147.390 MHz and 442.275 MHz repeaters.  On Wednesday, May 28^th,  Bob, N8ZCC, met with the Doylestown planning commission to work out details of getting our antennas on the new tower, and for securing permission to mount temporary antennas on Doylestown's second water tower. 

As we've come to expect from SARA's current Operations Manager, Bob walked away with:

	Permission to mount our repeater antennas on top of the new water tower when it is in place.
	Arrangements for SARA to work with the water tower fabricators to put antenna mounts on the tower for us as part of the construction
	Permission to mount our antennas on the second water tower as a temporary site.
	An offer from one of the planning commission members to house our repeaters at his house while the water tower is being replaced. This house is at an elevation of 1270' AMSL which, at ground level, puts this house only 30 feet lower than the top of the current water tower.  The site also has a 40' tower ready for us to use, a heated attic workshop to put the repeater equipment in, and will require less than 40 feet of feedline (i.e. 9913 without the need for matching stubs) from the antenna to the repeaters. All this will cost SARA only the electric to power the equipment.
	A donation of an older commercial GE Master Pro UHF repeater….yes….a complete repeater….including duplexer.  The unit works although it is about 25 years old and needs a little TLC.

Thanks go to Bob, N8ZCC, the Village of Doylestown, Doylestown's  Planning Commision, and the member that has offered us a terriffic temporary site.

As they become available, more details will appear in future editions of the  Salami Merchant.