Tag Archives: ARES

The March Review?

Okay, I admit, this is sad. My last post was over a year ago. Since this is a radio blog you may be inclined to think I haven’t been doing radio, or building projects, or anyhing else radio, that would be incorrect. I have been doing a lot of radio,

Our Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) has been a big part of things over the last year. As the amateur radio Emergency Coordinator for ARES/AUXCOMM here in Klamath County I am parallel to the CERT Coordinator though most of our active volunteers are involved in both so we have been working on division-of-labor concerns and coordinating activation, reporting, and assignments.

We also had some administrative changes with Emergency Management being reassigned under the Sheriff. So far it seems to be a good move. One thing I just found out about is an asset being transfered to CERT/AUXCOMM. We are getting an old ambulance to build into a mobile radio and CERT response vehicle. We have a trailer, but there are advantages to having a ready to roll vehicle with a giant generator at the front end. The story of this asset will develope over time. We still don’t have a timeframe for the transfer.

Rebuilding the KBARA packet infrastructure took up a lot of time last year. It has been running stable and continuously since my last post with minimal maintenance required. Our mountaintop sites weathered the winter season well and we are working on several new projects that rely in part on this packet infrastructure.

One such project is getting a full-featured Winlink amateur radio gateway up and running. The Civil Defense Communications Auxiliary, more on this in a minute, just installed a packet gateway accessible to much of the county. The gateway is hosted by the Sky Lakes Amateur Radio Association who’s assets are provided by the Sky Lakes Medical Center, relies on the KBARA packet infrastructure, and provides Winlink email access to the entire emergency communications community and the ham community in parts of northern California and southern Oregon. A great cooperative effort that benefits a lot of people.

The project is not completed this is just the first stage. Next up is adding HF access, and ultimatly forwarding email by radio-internet combinations or by radio only in emergencies. This project is a huge asset that covers a large area and fills a big need.

CDCA is one of my big projects. It was set up as a 501(c)(3) non-profit the Civil Defense Communications Auxiliary. Its purpose is to provide material and training support. The Sky Lakes Gateway Project is a good start. Many more projects too come.

Volunteer Examiner sessions have been sparse with only one session per quarter. I miss doing them more frequently.

One of the things I spent a lot of time on this year was getting authorized as an ARRL emergency communications Field Instructor and Field Examiner. This is primarily for ARES which has been going through a lot of changes this year. I recently qualified as a mentor/instructor for the ARRL’s online training for the EC-001 Introduction to Emergency Communications course. I have signed up to mentor for the first four two-month class cycles of the new program and am looking forward to the experience.

ARES/AUXCOMM is a big topic. The state of Oregon recognizes the ARRL’s Amateur Radio Emergency Service program statewide. Some counties have opted for other organizations like ACES or autonomous organizational structures like AUXCOMM. Within the county, Klamath has an AUXCOMM team but it is at the same time an ARES team. As I mentioned earlier CERT is also a big part of the mix because of the extensive crossover in personnel and assets. This wierd mix has also affected the writing of Operations and Training manuals.

After time and energy in both, I have turned focus to the Training Manual by creating a training matrix, then developing a program to meet the modular elements on the grid. Eventually, all of this will be written into a manual. From the Training Manual, the Operations Manual containing only procedural elements. When device specific or asset specific operations that require a check-out will point to the TM in an appendix. Once I get the base manuals written I will post them. This is a long-term project.

I still participate in the Nation Traffic System as a local net manager, Net Control Station, and participate in state and regional nets. 80 meters has been crappy over the winter so I have not been able to participate as much as I’d like. This has also curtailed a lot of my general HF operations, and limited Winlink radio access.

The poor propagation and a harsh reality exposed by the Fall SET (Simulated Emergency Test) was a major prompt to get a local packet and HF gateway, as well as up our game on the tech for the gateway.

One of the things I have been doing more of, particularly recently, is equipment R&R. I have a growing pile of radio gear to go through and reset, repair, document, determine what it is, or combine with other bits for operation. I love doing this but I have little bench space or time to dig into some of these projects, but I will find the time.

I ended my last post with “try not to wait four months”… okay it was 12 months. I promis to try and do better.

~Jon KK6GXG

The Move Is Done

Well, sort of…

We are here in Klamath Falls, Oregon now. We started the move July 1st and I was making runs all July. The old place was officially vacated July 31st. August was the slow unpacking of boxes and the beginning of several furniture building projects. I have built 6 bookcases; 2 of them 40 inches tall, the other 4, 70 inches tall.

I still have a number of things to build like the DVD cabinets that will hold our 1000ish movies and TV shows. I also have a lot of storage containers to build, think apothecaries drawers. Lot’s and lot’s of them.

You can see why I haven’t posted in a while. I have made some upgrades to the shack, well the mobile, the shack is looking rather minuscule right now.

I have absolutely no bench space for shop stuff or electronics. The station is occupying a puny 1 sq.ft. space across 2 shelves, but, I actually have an HF antenna outside! The MFJ-1982LP endfed is up. The feed point is about 15 feet up on the mast my 2m roll-up J-Pole is attached to and the rest of the antenna is supported by 2 31 foot Jackite poles and 20 feet up into the Ponderosa Pine in our front yard.

So far 80 and 40 meters have been kind. The net controls have had to work me pretty hard, but I have been getting through. I have been heard as far away as Victoria BC Canada, La Jolla California, Somewhere in Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada. Not bad for 5 watts.

The power on the base, my Yaesu FT-817ND, needs a boost now that I am putting together a local NTS Net. I need to make the Local to Section hop on HF more reliably and not make control work so hard. The local net will be on one of the club repeaters.

I have also moved forward by getting involved with a local active club, the Klamath Basin Amateur Radio Association. I have already done two events and a VE session with the club since we got up here. Also in the mix is getting started with the Klamath County CERT program.  There is some early work on getting an ARES/RACES group together. All kinds of fun going on.

Once we got up here I started work on the mobile. The Baofeng UV-5RE+ was not cutting it on 2 meters. I upgraded from 5 watts with a crappy little antenna to 25 watts with a QYT KT-9800D dual band mobile radio and an ANLI DC-124H TriBand antenna.  Much better performance. Also in the mobile, I installed a Uniden BEARCAT 980SSB Single Sideband CB and a Midland MXT400 GMRS radio. There is hardly any CB traffic up here, but surprisingly, there is quite a bit of GMRS traffic.

For a 2 meter base, I have been using one of the 5 watt handhelds attached to the homebrew 2 meter twin-lead J-Pole I built a while back. Now that I am getting hooked up with CERT, I think I should pull the J-Pole out of the PVC and use it as a portable roll-up. I also need a little more juice for poor weather conditions so a 2 meter base upgrade was in order. Another QYT KT-9800D mobile radio and a Diamond X50A dual-band base antenna should work nicely for VHF/UHF. Those will be incorporated into the station by the end of the week.

As for the HF side of the station… I need to poke around for something around 100 watts, which will require an antenna upgrade too. The MFJ-1982LP is only rated to 30 watts. As long as I keep the power down I should be able to use it for a while. That will still give me a 6 db power gain over the 5 watts I am pushing now. Anything should help. The section nets are on 80 and 40 meters so I will need an antenna that covers at least 10-80 meters. 100 watts should be more than enough for my needs.

Oh, one other thing, I finally got my Skywarn ID number, now I need to find a net for Skywarn. I haven’t found anything in southeastern Oregon yet. I’ll keep looking.

Anyway, that’s the status update for now. Look for an NTS page to be added to the site soon.

73,
~Jon KK6GXG

In the works

Mid May, two months since the last post. What have I been up to?

Of course, I have been doing the regular VE sessions, but other than that… Packing. Lots of packing. We have been planning on relocating for several years now but time has finally arrived that we are moving forward pun intended.

We don’t want to move in the winter and we don’t want to wait another year so… we are gearing up for a move sometime soon. One of the best ways to get ready is to start filtering through all of the stuff that has accumulated over the last 21 years we have been here.

As we shed truck-loads of stuff we just don’t need to Savers and Goodwill, we have been packing up the things we can do without for a few months. Having a bunch of other stuff on the brain, the ham shack, or most of it anyway, was one of the first things to get boxed. So for now, no electronics lab. Nearly all of my test equipment is boxed up. We are up to 40 boxes, filtering and packing more every day.

Lest you think I’m ignoring radio, I have been gearing up to be more active in ARES, RACES, NTS, Skywarn, and CERT by taking a lot of FEMA/DHS classes that are prereqs for various organizations. I am also scheduled to take a BLS class in two weeks which includes CPR, AES and more. I want to add a variety of EmComm instruction to my growing list of classes offered in the near future so I am ticking down the long list of prereqs and associated training.

In a somewhat side related area, I also recently acquired my Remote Pilot certificate with Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems rating. Basically, a commercial UAV pilots license in addition to my commercial airplane pilot certificate. This will allow me to do aerial photography and inspections for pay with a UAV/UAS. And what might I be taking pictures of and inspecting, radio towers???? Possibly.

Anywho, I wanted to post an update so you didn’t think I had abandon radio or the site. I just don’t have a lot to post about other than classes and ratings. I will be doing a mobile install of my FT-817 with a quad-band antenna sometime soon so I will plan on posting about that soon. I may also be posting some short subject videos in the near future as well.

Til next time, 73
~Jon KK6GXG