Emergency Communications

Frank O’Laughlin, WQ1O, writes: The Cape Cod and Islands District Amateur Radio Emergency Service will conduct a winter operations exercise on Saturday, January 25, 2020, to test its capability in establishing communications with stations within its district and outside it under emergency conditions. The operational exercise, dubbed “Ice Show” will test the ability of several field stations to communicate. This will also be a drill to test some of our hospital stations, primary stations, EOCs, shelters and other ARES member home stations. Version 1.2 of the exercise scenario and guidelines are available online.  Setup will begin at 8:30 AM, with …

District Emergency Coordinator Frank O’Laughlin, WQ1O, writes on Facebook: “Andrew Platt from Barnstable County and I met with the Superintendent of the [Cape Cod Regional Technical High School]. Ralph Swenson from the Barnstable County Sheriff’s office joined us to go over the new antenna installations for the new school under construction. The new school will [serve as] the new Regional shelter for the area. Public safety antennas and two new ARES dual band vertical antennas will likely be installed. My special thanks to Ralph and the Sheriff’s Office for their tireless efforts in supporting the emergency communications mission.” School construction …

ARES supported several SKYWARN activations over the last six weeks, reports Section Emergency Coordinator and ARES SKYWARN  Coordinator Rob Macedo, KD1CY. “The  biggest, a coastal storm event on October 16-17, 2019, resulted in widespread pockets of trees and wires down across the section. Hurricane force wind gusts were reported by Amateur Radio SKYWARN spotters along portions of the south coastal Massachusetts, Cape Cod and the Islands and even the North Shore of Massachusetts,” Rob writes. Hundreds of damage photos were received by Amateur Radio operators and SKYWARN spotters. At the height of the storm, approximately 250,000 were without power in …

Tom Kinahan, N1CPE, writes: As you may know, WMA section is conducting an ARRL Simulated Emergency Test on Sunday [November 3, 2019]. As a connection to that, I am getting a government station on 60 meters to communicate with amateur stations on channel 1 at 9 AM tomorrow. —— Amateurs Contact Military Stations on 60 Meters A government station call up amateur stations on 60-meter channel 1 (Dial 5.3305 MHz) at 9am Sunday (11/3/19) for the purpose of getting situational awareness reports. Amateurs will be asked for any known failures of infrastructure in their county such as water, power, telecommunications, …

From wma.arrl.org: After a long hiatus, the Western Massachusetts ARES Section will conduct a simplified Simulated Emergency Test (SET) to determine our current capacities for communications within the 5 counties in the section. The exercise will begin at noon local time on Sunday November 3 and last until approximately 3PM. Inter-section communications -MAY- be attempted in the 3PM to 4PM timeframe if the appropriate equipment can be put into place. More information on this will appear on this website prior to Nov 3 or be announced in an update during the regular ARES nets on the Sunday morning od the …