Emergency Communications

The Falmouth ARA will feature a presentation by Eastern Mass. Section Emergency Coordinator Mike Neilsen, W1MPN, at its May 29, 2003 meeting. ARRL Section Manager Phil Temples, K9HI will also attend.

FARA meets monthly on the last Thursday of the month at 7:30 p.m. at the Falmouth Town Hall in the Selectman’s meeting room (downstairs, east end of the building). Ample parking is available. —www.falara.org

The ARES Net Posponed to Next Sunday April 27th, at the same time 2000. This is pending approval by the MMRA Board. There will be a confirmation message during the week. -W1MPN, EMa SEC

W1MPN writes:

“On Monday, April 21st, the Boston Marathon will be held again this year. For the second consecutive year, all public safety efforts will be coordinated by the Unified Command Center (UCC), which will be hosted in the State Emergency Operations Center in Framingham.

I am requesting that all RACES/ARES nets in the EMa Section be activated on a standby basis from approximately 0800 to 1800. The sole purpose of the activation is to provide support communications for any incidents to the community at large (outside of the race course) that may occur during the event day, either as a result of an incident within the race, or independent of it. [Full story]

***** Special Message from the ARES Leadership *****
***** Request Widest Dissemination *****

This is a special message from your leadership which we have delayed transmitting until after the President’s address this evening.

There are significant events which seem to be on everyone’s mind, and what we should do about it. War and any domestic ramifications will affect us first as citizens, then as ham radio operators. First, it is important to remember that we are not first responders, as that duty is remains with Fire, Police, and humanitarian professionals such as the American Red Cross. We may, however, be called upon to support those agencies at any time if they are faced with communication issues. Furthermore, it is unlikely that the federal government will require any extraordinary restrictions in our frequency bands, but we may have to sacrifice some of our UHF space as some of it is granted on a shared basis with the government. In view of the circumstances of a foreign war, and the raising of the domestic terrorist warning level to Orange, we are asking you accomplish three important activities as soon as you can.First, secure your home and family. Make sure you have food and water for at least three days for each of your family members. Plan on filling your car gas tanks when your car is about half full, instead of letting it get lower, etc. These are just a few of the many steps you can take to become better prepared for any possible impact on your community. You can learn about this and many other great suggestions on the FEMA website, on http://www.ready.gov , or http://www.fema.gov/library/prepandprev.shtm. There are numerous pamphlets you can pull down for you and your family to read.

Next, make sure your home station is working well. Please remember that the dispersion of our members throughout our districts and the section could come in very handy during any failure of the communication infrastructure providing vital communication links. We now anticipate that hams will be most active as home relay stations as our movements may be restricted within our localities. An emergency can develop very quickly and without any notice. Please focus on your home station making sure it works well, and you have adequate alternative power resources. Then check your mobile station to ensure you can communicate on simplex frequencies properly. You may be needed while you are commuting to and from work, or running errands. Please carry your handheld units with you at all times when the level is raised to Orange, as we anticipate it will be sometime this week [we have been at Orange level since 3/17]. Finally, if the incident lasts for a while or there is a significant restoration element involved such as with the Red Cross, we may be needed to serve away from our homes. In that case, your prior preparations are key. Your technical and personal go-kits will need to be ready before, and not during the emergency. We will have some great information on our website to assist you in the next few days.

In the meantime, go about your lives as best you can. Your leadership has been working with RACES, the Commonwealth, and public service agencies such as the Red Cross to make sure we are ready as we can be for whatever may come along. We can be thought of as the 21st century New England patriots working in our proverbial fields with our proverbial muskets at the ready. We may or may not be asked to serve, but it is high honor to be trained and willing to do so. I speak for the ARES leadership when I say that we greatly appreciate your preparation and commitment.

Here is a brief summary of activities that are scheduled in the next few months. On Saturday, March 29, we will having another ARES workshop on Cape Cod, in Sandwich MA at the Oakridge School. It is just 10 minutes from the Sagamore Bridge, so consider joining us. We’ve updated the program to offer more field related activities, and to better dovetail with the League’s Emergency Communication Course offerings. So, if you’ve haven’t joined us yet, or it’s been a few years since you attended, please plan on joining us. Simply contact your DEC or me to indicate your interest to attend. There is plenty of room at the school, and of course, there is no charge except a
contribution for lunch.

We are also planning a follow on exercise to the February exercise on Saturday April 26. This exercise will allow continual practice of important skills, but will have more emphasis on local operations to allow us to hone skills of communicating with neighboring stations. Some inter-district comms will still be asked for as well, as well as the passing of some NTS traffic. A preliminary message will be released shortly.

We are about to enter the busy Public Service Event (PSE) season. Please consider volunteering for duty with some of these events, as they offer an opportunity to practice communicating in more difficult conditions, and under personal pressure. Its great preparation for any emergency event, particularly if you have little practice or experience. You’ll hear more on this email reflector and on our website.

On behalf of my staff, I wish you and your families the best in the coming months. If you have a service member deployed in a foreign theatre as I do, best wishes for their safety and swift return home. 73,

s/Michael P. Neilsen
Michael P. Neilsen, W1MPN
EMa SEC
978.562.5662 Admin
978.389.0558 FAX/Secondary

Hello to all…

Some time has passed since most of you submitted your contact and capabilities information. For many of you, that was well over a year ago. Please take a few mintues to submit any updated information since you filed your last application. It is very important that we get your current email address, as we are planning to migrate away from this site and set up new email address list later this year.How you do it is up to you. You can simply submit by return email pertinent updates to home address, email address, pager, cell phone, work phone, etc., brag, I mean, inform us of your changes in equipment, and if you have upgraded your license. We would also like to know what CCE courses you’ve completed or are working on. I prefer email, but you can fax or leave a voice mail 24/7 with your info at 978.389.0558.

Or, if it is more convenient for you, please use the updated EMa ARES application form in the “files” area of this website (Mass RAS Gen) to update any or all of the information requested on it.

Please accept my thanks in advance for your efforts. The leadership will be meeting next Saturday (3/15) to discuss, among other things, our membership and how to reach everybody during a crisis. I would like to have as fresh a list as possible for them.

One more request. When you submit your information, please send to w1mpn@arrl.net putting the word “Update” in the subject area. This will allow my mail program to sort the responses from my other email. Please also copy your DEC and EC as well. Obviously, if we haven’t talked to you in a while, this is a great way to reintroduce yourself.

Thanking you again…73,

Michael P. Neilsen, W1MPN
Eastern Massachusetts
Section Emergency Coordinator

A revision to the 2/8/03 Exercise Plan has been announced by the EMA ARES leadership. See http://ares.ema.arrl.org/mod.php?mod=userpage&menu=310801&page_id=36 for the details.

Hello to all…

The monthly ARES Net will be held this Sunday 1/19 at 2000 (8pm) on the MMRA network, or after the weekly Youth Net secures. For information on the MMRA network, please press the “EMa ARES Overview” button, and click on the MMRA link within. Please press the “read more” button.Although this change has been announced previously, we wanted to remind you again of the change, particularly the new time. These changes were in response to comments made by many of you, and we hope you like the result. Additionally, our long time net control and congenial host, Bill, N1VUX, is not available at this new time slot. Please join me in thanking Bill for his long dedicated service to the ARES net. I will be Net Control (NC) for the next few months, while we establish a schedule of NC’s. Please consider NC’ing this net on a rotating basis with other volunteers in the months to come.

We are making some changes to the venerable net, and more in the near future. The monthly ARES Net purpose is to practice making an ARES call to volunteers during an emergency/exigency, and then receiving checkins of volunteering ARES members, and other interested hams. As in the real situation, we will ask hams to check in with call, name, location of station or location if mobile/portable, and power source, as we have before. And as with past practice, it is important that you allow pauses in your transmissions to allow priority break-ins, and the network to drop/refresh properly. In a real world situation, you would check in the MMRA network FIRST to relieve congestion on the area RACES repeaters, so this monthly net is practice for that as well. We are exploring the use of internet based protocols such as IRLP and Echolink, to expand our net to the entire section as soon as we can.

We are asking you to add one important new item to your checkin. Please indicate whether you have priority traffic to pass to the net control. In an actual exigency, priority traffic would be involve any important information that must be passed to net control and cannot wait for the completion of check-in’s or a roll call. The traffic could be a fresh incident report, a report of major damage, or a high priority agency request. In a real situation, you must use your best judgment on what is priority information, with net control then deciding how to handle your information and when to continue the checkin. In the real situation, you would receive important information in the net concerning the exigency, directions for mobilization (or standby information), and staging/rendezvous points when the mobilization begins.

Since there will not be this activity in the monthly net (unless we have an exercise), we will substitute other activities. Changes will be announced in the future, but for this month we will:

Run two or more rounds of check-ins
Make brief announcements
SEC’s monthly comments
Contributors comments. KC1US will be a regular contributor of brief PSE announcements with website references for details
Roundtable discussion. This month’s topic will be the February 8th exercise.

A procedural note. If the network experiences problems, we will ask you to shift to the next repeater west of your location to attempt to maintain contact. For example, if Quincy 146.67 would fail, shift to Quincy 224.4 or Weston 146.82. If Stoughton 146.715 would fail, shift to 446.725 or west to Marlboro 146.61, 449.925, 53.81 repeaters. Same procedure for those south using Shrewsbury and Hopkinton repeaters to move north.

I look forward to talking to you on the net. 73,

Michael P. Neilsen, W1MPN
Section Emergency Coordinator
Eastern Massachusetts Section
Pager: 1-800-759-8888 PIN 1155084
Admin: w1mpn (symbol for at) arrl.net
978-562-5662 Primary/Voice Mail
978-389-0558 FAX/ EFax Voice Mail

W1MPN writes:

EMa ARES has now shifted its monthly net to the third Sunday of every month, starting at 2000 (8pm) on the Minuteman Repeater Association linked repeater system following the weekly Youth Net.

73,

Michael P. Neilsen, W1MPN
Section Emergency Coordinator
Eastern Massachusetts Section
Pager: 1-800-759-8888 PIN 1155084
Admin: w1mpn (symbol for at) arrl.net
978-562-5662 Primary/Voice Mail
978-389-0558 FAX/ EFax Voice Mail

***** Winter Exercise Scheduled for Saturday February, 8, 2003 *****
***** Announcing a Call for Players from the ARES community,
and from Clubs in the Section *****
***** Proposed Play for the Exercise *****

Happy New Year to all of you, and I hope that the year brings happiness and prosperity to you and your family.

The ARES leadership has scheduled a Winter Quarter exercise for Saturday February 8, 2003. The exercise will be an EOC to EOC emergency communications exercise using a similar approach as the November exercise, but implementing improvements suggested in critique sessions. We will also use a major winter storm scenario to add realism and purpose.Due to the time of the year, the field component prominent in the November SET will not be exercised. Additionally, the relatively quick follow on was in response to many of you who suggested doing a similar exercise as soon as possible.

ARES members, ARESMAT teams, Club Emergency response teams, town and city RACES officers, and individuals are invited to play in this exercise. Official RACES participation is not expected, but always welcome.

** Concept **

Teams and clubs are asked to set up a physical EOC and operators for the exercise. Ideally, several of these will be set up in each district. Due to the time of year, all exercise activities will be carried out in these locations. Obviously, EOC’s must be heated and lighted, and available for amateur use that day. Public Service Agencies are welcome to participate to any extent they wish. Please remember that most EMA personnel may not choose to participate because as it is a Saturday. They are, however, most welcome to participate if they so desire.

The exercise will consist of establishing contact with other EOC’s within and without your district, and then passing various traffic. Most traffic will be from simulated agency officials in each EOC, and some will consist of urgent traffic. We will “pick up” where we left off in November. Most importantly, we will strive to improve our ability to establish communications, set up effective net controls, and efficiently pass NTS traffic. We will implement many of the suggestions you forwarded such as revising the frequency plans with more local emphasis, setting up more planned activities during the day (i.e. “envelopes” or timed activities), and allowing use of some repeater assets. There was some discussion about adding more complexity and extending the exercise period, but no decision has been made as of yet.

** Schedule **

Please discuss participation with your clubs and interested individuals as soon as possible during the month. If you have any suggestions, please forward them as soon as you can. If you would like your DEC or me to answer questions at your meeting, please don’t hesitate to ask.

The DEC’s and I meet a week from Saturday on January 11 to finalize plans. An exercise plan will then be available about a week later. The district frequency plan will appear separately about a week before the exercise.

I will send an update shortly after the staff meeting on the 11th. Let’s work together toward a successful exercise!

s/Michael P. Neilsen

Michael P. Neilsen, W1MPN
Section Emergency Coordinator
Eastern Massachusetts Section
Pager: 1-800-759-8888 PIN 1155084
Admin: w1mpn (symbol for at) arrl.net
978-562-5662 Primary/Voice Mail
978-389-0558 FAX/ EFax Voice Mail

I’m pleased to report that the League’s internet service provider, Interbridge.net, has agreed to assign a distinct subdomain name for the EMa ARRL ARES web site. Beginning today, this site can be accessed via the address,

http://ares.ema.arrl.org

In addition, the old address,

http://ema.arrl.org/ares

will continue to be supported.

Why did we implement this change? Because it more accurately describes the site from a hierarchical perspective.

73,

Phil Temples, K9HI

ARRL Section Manager,
Eastern Massachusetts Section
and “web host”

Starting next month in January 2003, the monthly ARES Net will change to the third Sunday of each month and will start earlier at 2000, right after the weekly Youth Net. We will also be implementing some changes to the format, but they will be announced by email prior to any changes taking place. W1MPN.

The next EMa ARES Workshop will be held on Saturday, March 29, 2003 at 0900. Location in the Southeast Mass or Cape Cod TBA. Check further details with WQ1O.

I wanted to share this Request For Information from the ARRL Volunteer Resources Committee, via Steve Ewald at ARRL Hq. VRC feels that more cooperation is needed between ARES and NTS programs. They are looking for input from Section Managers, Section Traffic Managers and Section Emergency Coordinators as to how this might occur.

Additionally, I invite comments from any ARES or NTS participants.

73,

Phil Temples, K9HI

ARRL Section Manager,
Eastern Massachusetts Section
k9hi@arrl.orgARRL Section Managers,

The ARRL Volunteer Resources Committee has asked me to forward this letter to you.
Thank you very much for your help.

73,

Steve, WV1X
sewald@arrl.org
_______________

Dear Section Managers,

It has never been more important for the volunteers in ARRL’s
emergency communications programs to serve with professionalism and
excellence. During the past year, the Volunteer Resources Committee
has been studying the ARRL’s programs related to emergency
communications (see Minute 35, Board of Directors meeting, January
2002, March QST, page 64). This review was undertaken not only because
of the growing concern for homeland security following September 11,
2001, but also because of the ongoing need to ensure that Amateur
Radio responds effectively to disasters unrelated to terrorism —
floods, hurricanes, forest fires, earthquakes, hazardous materials
incidents, etc.

Several inter-related themes have emerged during the study. One is
that Amateur Radio must earn and maintain increased credibility with
served agencies, both nationally and at the local level. Another is
that Amateur Radio emergency communications volunteers must be more
actively involved in a variety of training experiences throughout the
year. Finally, although ARES and NTS are (and will continue to be)
structurally separate in your Section Field Organizations, these two
volunteer programs need to work more cooperatively, functioning as
part of one coherent emergency communications program at the Section
level.

The VRC believes that both ARES and NTS are valuable programs, and so
we will propose no structural change at the Section Level. We are
convinced that more cooperation is needed, however.

Some Sections have achieved a high degree of functional integration
and cooperation between ARES and NTS. In other Sections, each may
operate as though the other did not exist. The VRC believes that close
cooperation between ARES and NTS, with mutual respect and pooling of
expertise, is the best way to serve agencies effectively and to earn
credibility as fully-skilled emergency communicators.

The VRC will recommend that leadership officials in both ARES and NTS
be strongly encouraged to achieve certification in the ARRL’s
Emergency Communications certification program. We will also recommend
that grass-roots volunteers be encouraged to pass at least the Level 1
certification. Along with the many other benefits of certification,
ARES and NTS operators will gain better understanding of and
appreciation for the value of both programs.

The VRC requests all Section Managers (in consultation with your SEC’s
and STM’s) and the three NTS Area Staff Chairmen to develop a vision
of how a closer working relationship can be effected between ARES and
NTS.

Input from all Section Managers is needed, because Sections are very
different from one another.

1. If your Section has already brought ARES and NTS together quite
well, please describe how it is done, what problems may have arisen,
and how the problems were resolved. Your success stories will provide
ideas to other Section Managers.

2. If your Section’s ARES and NTS are functionally separate now,
you are asked to work with your SEC and STM to develop a plan for
bringing them into closer cooperation. Please describe your thought
process: what do you see as the major issues to be considered, the
important problems to be solved, and the major goals to be achieved?

Please post comments as soon as possible on the SM reflector. ARRL HQ
Staff will see that your input is relayed to the VRC, so it can be
considered as we prepare our report to the Board.

Thank you for working with us toward the goal of serving our
communities and our country to the best of Amateur Radio’s capability.

73,
The VRC

The drill began for us at 10am. That was 1 hour later than the official start of the section SET. This was due to our operations plan having been completed before the Section plan was complete.

Cape Cod ARES dispatched 2 field teams. One was deployed to assist Sandwich Emergency Management office. The other was sent to the Lower Cape Regional Technical High School in Harwich MA…Communications were quickly established with K1PBO Cape cod ARES EOC and both teams via 2m FM simplex.

Communications were also quickly established via 40m NVIS on 7230khz (severe interference was observed from a slow scan TV Net on 7228kzh). NVIS signals were very strong even for such close range. Although CCARES has done this numerous times in our last 10 drills, the NVIS signals were the best we have encountered to date.

We attempted to initiate comms on 75m NVIS, but signals were very poor. It was certain that 40m would be the band of choice today. We were able to establish comms with our EC on Martha’s Vineyard Brad KB1QL on 40m. An attempt to establish communications with Region II on our liaison frequency of 147.465. Contact was unsuccessful.

Several NTS and tactical messages were exchanged between our field teams and CCARES EOC. We were able to fulfill envelope 1 by deploying team members to the Sandwich EM site. We were initially unable to successfully act on envelope #3 as a path had not been located.

Successful check-in was made to WC1MAB Region II anchoring the EMA/RI RACES Net on 7246khz. Signals were excellent.

An initial NTS message on current shelter status was sent to WC1MAB on 40m. We then learned that Region II had indeed heard us calling on the 2m liaison frequency (147.465)earlier. They could not get a sufficient signal back to us. Once a relay path was made, we were able to send an NTS message destined for W1MPN via 40m.

An NTS message was relayed to us from Central MA Red cross on the 40m Net(7246khz). We had contact with many stations on 40m NVIS(7230khz). Several RI EOCs checked in with us having super signals. Our local operations continued normally untill mid afternoon.

Participation of CCARES Members

Number of CCARES members participating in the Exercise: 12

WQ1O-Frank
WA1KCC-Jim
KB1EAJ-Ritchey
W1VZT-Ben
N1ZPO-Mark
W1PPY-Chris
W1RBF-%@!#%& (also Sandwich EM Director)
N1CP-Chris
WA1JSE-Paul
KC1KM-Jim
K1WCC-Henry
N1PIV-Trenor

Modes and bands Used in Exercise
2m FM
2m SSB
6m FM
6m SSB
40m NVIS
40m Normal deploy
Packet Radio 2m

Number of Messages Passed
NTS format – 15
Tactical Messages – 24
NTS using packet radio – 3

Number of off Cape Stations Worked
40m – 7 stations

Operational Objectives
Deploy field teams – Successful
Logistical Resupply(Food) – Partially successful
Conduct NVIS operations with other off Cape stations – Extremely successful
Conduct all mode operation between fied teams and EOC – Extremely successful
Establish Contact to Region II on Simplex 2m FM – Unsuccessful* (warrants further technical investigation as we were unable to hear WC1MAB on 2m, but they could hear us)(we also worked other stations further away than WC1MAB on 2m FM with no difficulty)
Provide relief operators at the field sites – Successful

Observations and Analysis of Operations

1. The goal of getting numerous stations to play in the EMa Section, WMa Section and RI was well represented. It was good to see all those call signs in there.

2. 40m was incredibly reliable for this exercise. It is interesting to note that CCARES has observed the situation in which communications with just one station using an NVIS antenna can do well even if the other station is using normal antenna configurations. We have observed this concept in 6 of our last 10 drills. When we were communicating with WC1MAB on 40m, we were using a normal dipole at 45 feet. Signals were good. As we approached the end of the 40m Net on 7246khz, I conducted a test with WC1MAB (W3EVE as NCS). We switched our antenna to our NVIS 40 meter dipole (6′ off the ground with a counterpoise wire 5% longer underneath). Steve reported a dramatic signal increase after the switch(thanks Steve!). This is a great demonstration of how NVIS can be used for significant advantage.

I also want to take this opportunity to note the professionalism in operations by the RACES Region station operators. Net operations were done very effectively. I want to thank Steve W3EVE and Bob WA1OEZ for helping WC1MAB anchor the net. Great Job to all. My thanks to WMa SEC Dennis Zonia and also the RI groups who participated. We are also very lucky to have Mike W1MPN as our SEC here in the east. My desire was to see people get in the field to operate. I used to believe for years that I was prepared for field ops. That belief was shaken to the core after CCARES began our series of field drills shortly after the 9-11 attacks. You never realize just how unprepared you are until your operation ceases because you failed to bring a 50 cent item. After that, you never forget that item again. During our May 18th drill, we had downpours all day long with strong winds. I learned more from that drill than any other to date. I never would have learned those lessons without going out and experiencing it. It was great to see all you guys “in action” today. You should all be proud of yourselves for doing a great job today! My thanks to all who put in time and hard work to make the exercise possible.

73s and Happy Holidays to all!

Respectfully Submitted,
Frank WQ1O
Cape Area ARES DEC