MARS will be holding an exercise starting Sunday (7/23/17) at 11:00 a.m. through 8:00 p.m. on Thursday (7/27/17).
ARES and general amateur radio operators should expect that at some point during this period, MARS members may be tasked to obtain information from the Amateur Radio operators in our areas. Most likely, this will be the same type of infrastructure reporting we have done in the past and is done on the Sunday morning WMA HF net. We will only be looking for real, actual conditions; nothing simulated.
MARS communicators might try to obtain this infromation duing various scheduled nets including NTS messages nets, club nets, etc. They may also try to obtain information via the various SKYWARN and ARES/RACES partnered repeaters.
In addition to infrastructure reports, MARS is often interested in relayed reports from the avaiation automated weather systems (ASOS). Report weather information from airport ATIS/ASOS stations that you can directly receive via radio. These stations broadcast continuously in the 120.000 – 138.000 MHz frequency range using amplitude modulation. Information from the ATIS should include airport, time, temperature, altimeter (barometer), wind, precipitation, and visibility.
A list of stations with their frequencies and a map can be found at: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/weather/asos/?state=MA
A brief introduction to ATIS can be found at: https://www.ivao.aero/training/documentation/books/PP_ADC_ATIS.pdf
A more detailed introduction to ATIS/ASOS can be found at: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/brochures/ASOS-book.pdf [ALT LINK]socidoc.com_ppadcatis.
Marek Kozubal, KB1NCG
EMA ARES SEC