Inside..
-
Second Annual Ohio ARES VHF Simplex Contest
-
Multi-Multi Kids Day
-
Backup Your Files
-
NIMS / ICS
-
DMR
-
Getting this Newsletter
-
One Question Survey
-
Upcoming Hamfests
-
Got Questions
-
Final - Final
************
Lloyd
Cabral, KH6LC, reports he plans to have his station on the air for Kids Day as a
multi-multi on 20, 15, and — if it opens — 10 meters. He is anticipating a
half-dozen young visitors to his Keaau, Hawaii, home.
Kids
Day begins on Saturday, January 7, at 1800 UTC and concludes at 2359 UTC.
“We’ll be spotting ourselves on DX Summit,” Cabral said.
“I’m not sure who has more fun, the kids operating or the adults ‘coaching’
them. We must be on to something good because everyone wants to come back
year after year.
Please
consider inviting some young people in to operate.”
Sponsored
by the Boring (Oregon) Amateur Radio Club, this event has a simple exchange,
suitable for younger operators: first name, age, location, and favorite
color. Details are on the
ARRL website.
********************
ANNOUNCING
>> The Second Annual Ohio ARES VHF Simplex Contest! January 14, 2917.
After
a lot of requests, we are opening this up to 6 meters as a part of
your score as well! There is a lot of potential for wide-area
coverage on that band, and we need to cultivate some interest- so, for the
sixers out there, burn eggs on your beam!!
Some
questions, and answers:
-
On the bonus situations, the EOC bonus is exactly what it says- operation must
be from an EOC, not a nearby trailer or remote location. EOC ops, add 50 points
to your total contact score. Operation from any portable location (trailer,
tent, park bench, igloo) is 100 points added to your total contact score.
Contact an ARES officer of any type, add 5 points to that contact (in other
words, if your contact says he’s an EC, it’s worth 6 points.)
-
On digital. All modes are open and we’ve had some questions as to ‘which’ mode.
Any of the modes commonly accepted for NBEMS work!
-
Frequencies haven’t been mentioned. Grab any you like- if your district has a
prescribed simplex frequency, try that first. Anything except a repeater. Make
sure you get the county or location of your
contact-
the whole point is to be able to plot your best coverage area. Look for ‘real’
signal reports.
-
You know what? If you get bored and want to fry some eggs on your six-meter
antennas, go for it. DO INCLUDE your six contacts in your score!
-
HAVE FUN!
Here
are the rules again!
Purpose
ARES
is tasked with being able to provide communications “When all else fails.”
Local communication is critical and typically takes place on the VHF or UHF
amateur band. In order to improve our ability to perform on these bands, Ohio
Section ARES is sponsoring the ARES VHF Contest (Yeah, we know, but calling it
the Ohio VHF / UHF Contest got a little long-winded). Participants in the
contest are encouraged to make as many contacts as possible within the
time-frame of the contest, with as many different geographical locations as the
bands permit. The contest is open to all Amateur operators. ARES members are
strongly encouraged to participate. How else are you going to win the ‘bragging
rights’ session of your next ARES meeting?
When
did you say it was?
The
contest is January 14, 2017. The start time is (for those of
us who sleep in) 10 AM through 6 PM Eastern. Yeah, a civilized time-frame that
doesn’t rob sleep, and allows time with the family. Why, you can even watch a
few cartoons in the morning!
Where
you gonna’ be?
You
may operate this contest from anywhere. There are certain benefits for
venturing out from your warm, comfortable home station. EOC stations can gain
extra points. Portable stations can gain even MORE extra points – that is, if
your frozen fingers will still be able to operate a keyboard. Portable stations
MUST use portable antennas, nothing permanently attached…kind of like Field Day
on ice. We are not going with any mobile operation this time. The image of a
bunch of vehicles running around with portable towers, 150 pounds of antenna
hardware and an occasional grounding anchor is best left to the ARRL
contesters.
Da
Bands – a la’ Mode
Because
local emergency communication takes place primarily on the two meter and 70
centimeter bands, the contest is limited to those two bands plus 6
meters! Within each band, we will have these modes: FM Simplex,
“Everything else” Simplex; DIGITAL simplex contacts will make up a third mode
on each band. Contacts with a station count once per mode- if you can talk the
other guy into abandoning “his frequency” and meeting you on SSB or CW, more
power to ya! NO REPEATER CONTACTS WILL COUNT. If you get bored, you certainly
are welcome to chat amongst yourselves on repeaters, or simplex, or cell
phones, or smoke signals.
Da
Contacts
The
goal is to contact as many different stations in as many different counties as
possible. You can make as many overall contacts as you like, they will then be
multiplied by the number of counties you’ve reached. Extra points will be
available for contacting an EC, AEC, DEC, ADEC, ASEC or SEC. Pretty simple- any
more complex and we’ll confuse the scorekeepers.
Da
Score
Each
FM Simplex contact counts as 1 point.
Each
non- FM simplex contact counts as 1 point.
Each
digital simplex contact counts as 1 point. (Detect a pattern here?)
Contact
with EC, AEC, DEC, ADEC, ASEC or SEC adds 5 points.
Contact
with an EOC or with a portable station adds 5 points.
Operation
from an EOC add 50 points to your total contact score.
Operation
from a portable location add 100 points to your total contact score.
Total
contact score (all bands/modes added together) will be multiplied by the total
number of counties you contacted.
Da
Logs
Please
use any of the appropriate computer logging programs, paper dupe sheets, a
well-worn slide rule or rusty abacus. Just keep all that to yourself, we can’t
find anyone with the time to go through all the detail contacts. Submit an
email to: contest@delares.org with the
following:
Your
name:
Group
name:
Location:
(City, county)
FM
Simplex Contacts:
“Everything
else” Simplex Contacts:
Digital
Simplex Contacts:
EOC
bonus:
Portable
bonus:
Total
Contact Score (Add above together, but you figured that out already):
Multiply
by total number of counties contacted (include your own!):
Bask
in the glory of a well thought out, well executed effort!
Definition of acronyms..
EOC
= Emergency Operations Center
NBEMS
= Narrow Band Emergency Messaging System
ARES
= Amateur Radio Emergency Service
SM
= Section Manager
SEC
= Section Emergency Coordinator
ASEC
= Assistant Section Emergency Coordinator
DEC
= District Emergency Coordinator
ADEC
= Assistant District Emergency Coordinator
EC
= Emergency Coordinator
AEC
= Assistant Emergency Coordinator
CW
= Continuous Wave
SSB
= Single-Side Band
FM
= Frequency Modulation
Backup Your Files
Hey
Gang,
With
the new year upon us you might want to take a good hard look at doing a backup
of all the files on your computer. Portable hard-drives are really cheap and
easy to hookup. With most of them, all you do is just plug it in to your
computer’s USB port and away you go, instant extra storage. The best thing is
you can transport this little gadget from one computer to another. If you are
like me, you have several computers in the house, and by using a single portable
hard-drive I can keep all those important backups all in one place. Now that
makes sense!
You
can get these small, lightweight portable hard-drives practically everywhere,
and they are well worth the few dollars you’ll spend on them. In most cases a 2
Terabyte hard-drive will cost less than $80, and that will give you enough
memory to easily backup most everything on your computer(s) several times this
year.
Have
you got pictures that you want to keep? I have pictures that date back into the
60’s and 70’s that are priceless to me, and since they are of family members
that are now no longer with us, those memories could be gone forever if they
weren’t backed up! By the way, I would highly recommend that you download all
those pictures from your cell phone to your computer and then back it up onto
the portable hard-drive. This way you won’t lose any of your pictures from your
cell phone in case it gets damaged or lost. How about that all those important
emails or documents that you have been saving (your IS 100, 200, 700 & 800
certificates come to mind). it can all be gone in a flash if it’s not backed up
somewhere.
Now
most of you know that I’m a real advocate of backing up my files. I have
backups that date back to the middle 1990’s, and over those years I’ve had
computer crashes, many of them in fact. Getting those oh so valuable files back
now becomes a real panic if you are counting on the internal disk drive for
them alone.
Well,
let me tell you that even though I subscribe to a very reputable “cloud based” computer
backup company, I have found that sometimes things just don’t get backed up
when you think they do, and that’s when you find out that you don’t have them
anymore. That’s happened to me a number of times. So, I no longer count on just
that alone. I do my own backup of those very valuable files.
That’s
why I’m recommending that you purchase one of those inexpensive portable hard-drives
for just this situation. It’s really easy to backup most everything. I don’t
recommend trying to back-up your programs however. That’s because most programs
are tied to your computer’s registry, and if you’re starting fresh with a new
computer, or you’ve had to reformat your current computer’s hard-drive, it
won’t understand where those very important registry logs are kept. Save those disks
that the programs came on. Don’t just throw them away. If you’ve purchased
programs on-line, keep the original download, usually it’s a zipped file that
you can burn to a disk or keep on a flash drive. If you don’t, you could easily
loose them forever.
Backing
things up today is so easy and affordable, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t
invest a few bucks into a portable hard-drive.
********************
NIMS / ICS
Training
For
all of 2016 you have heard from Stan and myself about the importance, and need
to get your four basic NIMS/ICS training (ICS 100, 200, 700 & 800)
completed.
Our
state database shows that we have been very successful at getting those courses
completed, as that we have well over 300 people with the 4 basic courses
registered with us. We also have more than 500 others working their way through
these courses at various stages of completion, and hopefully they will be
completing them very soon.
This
year we will be keeping up the pressure to get the training in, but I’m now
going to push hard on all of you to not only get this training, but to get
those so valuable certificates turned in to me so that we can get you added to
the database as well. Yes, we have a lot of folks in there, but we know that we
don’t have yours. How do we know that? Everyone that has the 4 basic courses and
has shared those certificates with us is now listed on the Ohio Section NIMS
Roster. Do you know if your certificates have been turned in? You can now find
out quickly if we have you in the database, Here’s a link http://arrl-ohio.org/SEC/special/nims_roster.html
If
you don’t see your name on the list we don’t have all 4 of your needed certificates,
and we definitely need and want them! This list shows those who have all 4
certificates turned in. If you don’t see your name on the list, send them to
me n8sy@n8sy.com Now even if you haven’t gotten all 4 of
these courses in, we still need you to get what you do have turned in to us so
that we can get you started on your way.
I’ve
had a lot of folks ask me why this training is so important. The answer is easy.
In 2014 the ARRL signed a MOU with FEMA to help them when needed. This puts
ARES in direct contact with FEMA now, this is a relationship that we didn’t
have before. The agreement indicates that we are to be a TRAINED corps of
communicators. With that stated, FEMA’s expectations are that we have the 4
basic courses – ICS 100, 200, 700 and 800 completed so that we can properly
operate within their Incident Command System that ALL emergencies now operate under.
So you see, we’ve now agreed to get this training, and that’s why we need to
fulfil our part of this MOU as best as we can.
The
Ohio Section has taken a lead in the country with this and really dug its heals
in and has done a great job of completing this training. Let’s keep it going
for 2017!!
********************
DMR.. Hey Everyone on
DMR – The Ohio Talkgroup Net is now set to be every Wednesday night at 8:30pm
EST. Don’t forget, there will be an Ohio Statewide DMR Net every Wednesday
night starting this coming Wednesday!!!
Come, join in on the fun and learn more about DMR from those who are on.
Want
more information about DMR? Here’s a link to get you started..
http://arrl-ohio.org/digital/digital.html and also located there is Andy, K4AWC’s
newest Ohio Codeplug. You can download it while you’re on this same page.
Did
you know one of the really unique features of the Brandmeister DMR System is
that it records all of the activity? It does, which means that even if you’ve
missed checking in on the weekly statewide net, you can still hear it. Here’s a
link for you.. https://hose.brandmeister.network/3139/archive/ Now if you noticed 3139 is the Ohio statewide
Talkgroup. You can change that to any of the Talkgroups and listen to the
archived files.
There’s
lots more information about DMR on the Ohio Section DMR webpage. Go take a
look.
********************
Heck,
just send me an email: n8sy@n8sy.com and let me know
that you want to be added. It’s really just that easy. We have over 2,500
persons on our Ohio Section Mailing List now and growing.
Are
you passing this newsletter on to others? Please, if you know of anyone that
would be interested in this information, feel free to pass it on to them. You
don’t have to be an ARRL member or even a ham to receive these emails.
You
can always “Opt-Out” at any time if you feel this is not what you
were expecting.
********************
One Question
Survey.
Have you seen that there is a NEW question on the website? There is, please
take just a few seconds and answer the question. It’s FUN to see how your
answer stacks up with all the other folks and it’s good for me to know so that
I can tailor articles to your responses.
http://arrlohio.org
Are
these responses really useful? The simple answer to that is YES. I have seen
several presentations given by others with this One Question data being used.
It’s really great to know that others see this information as useful too.
NOW.. Do you have any questions that you’d like to
see posted? Let me know, send me an email n8sy@n8sy.com with your question(s).
********************
01/15/2017
| Sunday Creek Amateur Radio Federation Hamfest
Location:
Nelsonville, OH
Sponsor:
Sunday Creek Amateur Radio Federation
01/29/2017
| TUSCO Amateur Radio Club Hamfest
Location:
Strasburg, OH
Sponsor:
Tusco Amateur Radio Club
********************
Want
to sit and just chat awhile? I’m available, Heck, I’ll even buy!!
********************
Finally.. As
Phil Esterhouse of the acclaimed Hill Street Blues used to say.. “Hey, let’s be careful out there..” this holds true for all of us as well, but have FUN doing it!!
73,
Scott,
N8SY..
eof..
