Tag: #60m

Emergency Communications

MARS Announces HF Skills Exercise, July 20-24, 2020

- by k9hi - 1 Comment
From ARRL Web:

Members of the Military Auxiliary Radio System (MARS) will conduct an HF skills exercise July 20 – 24 to hone their operating skills and messaging-handling capabilities.

MARS members will be reaching out to the amateur radio community via the 60-meters Channel 1 Net (5330.5 kHz dial) twice a day, the SATERN HF net (14.265 MHz), and by contacting various stations via HFLink throughout the exercise. MARS members will be requesting assistance with collecting county status information as well as airport weather information, called METARs. MARS members will also be passing ICS 213 messages to numerous Department of Defense (DoD), federal, and amateur radio addressees.

This exercise will be announced via WWV at 00:10 and via WWVH at 00:50 starting on or about July 13. WWV and WWVH listeners will be asked to take an online listener survey. This HF radio training event will not impact regular communications. — Thanks to Paul English, Chief, Army MARS 

Emergency Communications

Department of Defense Broadcast on 60 Meters, November 16, 2019

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Tom Kinahan, N1CPE, writes on the Wellesley ARS mailing list:

Just a reminder that tonight at 10 PM EST, there will be a DoD broadcast on 60 meters channel 1, 5330.5 khz upper sideband. This broadcast from two Department of Defense stations on the east and west coasts are a test and demonstration of DoD to amateur interoperability. For the past two weeks, MARS stations operating with their DoD callsigns have been talking to Amateur stations getting situation awareness type reports using 60 meters.

At 10 PM, the message will likely be in voice and digital modes. The message will probably request listeners to report how they heard the two broadcast stations.

Emergency Communications

MARS Members To Support Defense Department Radio Comms Readiness Exercise

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Tom Kinahan, N1CPE, writes:

As part of this COMEX, MARS members will reach out to amateur radio operators (on October 24-26) for any information on real life infrastructure failures. We have been practicing this sort of reporting as part of both Western and Eastern Mass ARES nets. If there are any know local failures of infrastructure, defined as Power, Water, Medical, Sanitation, Communications or Transportation, just let the MARS operator know with information on your county name, or your zip code (which is easy to determine county name with). 

MARS operators will use non-internet connected VHF/UHF repeaters as well as 60 meter channel 1 in our area, to gather these reports.

MARS stations will be operating from Oct 22-26, but the participation of Amateur Radio operators is expected on Oct 24-26.

Amateur Radio operators are asked to monitor 60-meter channel 1 (5,330.5 kHz, USB) at 0001 UTC (8:01 PM ET) on October 24, for a high-power broadcast of updated information regarding this exercise and how the Amateur Radio community can participate.

Contact Tom Kinahan, N1CPE, with any questions.

See: http://www.arrl.org/news/mars-members-to-support-defense-department-radio-communication-readiness-exercise