Thanks to a link tweeted by @VE3MPG I found this piece. I never would of found it otherwise but I feel it is worth sharing with you…
Please take the time to check this out….
http://w3atb.com/66-boston-marathon-2013-bombs-carnage-and-amateur-radio-operators
And hope you enjoy it as much as I did…
Thanks to VE3MPG for bringing it to my attention and a big thanks to Tim Carter, W3ATB for being there to assist the community and also this very fine blogpost to inform us…
73bob
Worked All States…
This award which is sponsored by the ARRL is awarded when an Amateur Radio Operator can confirm that he/she has made contacts in all the States…
At least that is the “Coles Notes” version… For a more complete and accurate defination please go to the ARRL (American Radio Relay League) website using the link provided.
Well after the sweepstakes had concluded I decided to check my contacts from my logs and came up with the following information which I transposed onto a map…
For your information:
Green Dot means confimred on LoTW
Blue Dot means confirmed on EQSL (does not count toward WAS)
Orange Dot means not confirmed yet
So as you can see I am missing a few but I am hoping that the orange dots will get confirmed once LoTW catches up with 2 major contests in 3 weeks… All the Orange Dot States were contacted during the 2012 ARRL SSB Sweepstakes this last weekend so I am hoping that their logs should be submitted in the near future which should confirm the contact in LoTW
But if you take a close look you will see one state with no dots whatsoever… Hopefully someone will be on the air from the Great State of Kentucky in the next little while so I can confirm the state to attain the WAS Award.
The one great of many great things about the Amateur Radio Hobby is that there are many things you can do. Some people compete in Contests…
Othere chase contacts with rare countries in an attempt get over 100 countries confirmed to get their DXCC award. You have seen me talking about that one recently…
Other people activate mountain tops (Summits on the air) and again you have seen me mention SOTA many times over the years…. Some people like to do public service communications and others like Emergency Service communications…
The different things you can do in this hobby just boggle the mind… You should never get bored as there is so much you can do…
And so now after 21 years in the hobby I have started chasing awards… Mid September of 2011 I started keeping track of my DX Contacts and my US States and so far have managed to confirm 99 Countries (DXCC Entities) that I have contacted and so far almost the 50 states.
After that??? I dunno but there always is something to do in this hobby…
73bob
One of our biggest issues as Amateur Radio Operators is trying to explain our reason for existance in this world of instant communications… When we give Hurricane Katrina as a prime example of the system failing we get comments like:
“We learned from the lessons of Katrina….”
Yesterday Hurricane Sandy (for the sake of a better way to describe it) smashed the Hell out of the New York, New Jersey and most of the rest of the upper Eastern Seaboard…
Dead air: Sandy takes out 1 in 4 cell towers, FCC says, and more could fail.
I guess this means that they did not learn… or they were overwhelmed again….
Thanks to the Winnipeg Free Press from reminding us…
73bob
Yesterday (last night to be specific) I decided to set up the gear to monitor as much as Superstorm Sandy as I could… Twitter, ECHOLINK and HF SSB gave me a good deal of information and that was almost to the point of overloading the senses… I can only imagine what the Communicators were going through in the areas strongly impacted by Sandy…
NYC ARECS (twitter @nycaresc) did an excellent job of letting us know what was happening in the Big Apple via their tweets… They have a very large and comprehensive Frequency List on their Website should you ever be in NYC in a bad time…
The VOIP Weather Net (
http://www.voipwx.net/
) Was active with numerous Repeaters Linked together via ECHOLINK and the IRLP . This gave an excellent image of what was happening locally in the Eastern Seaboard area. From trees down, power out and flooding it brought it all down to a level that was easier to comprehend… When you hear a guy saying that the tree in his yard has just taken out the power lines in front of his house… It brings it home…
The Hurricane Watch Net (
http://www.hwn.org/
) operating on 7.268 and 14.325 gave us a large picture of the damages and conditons from Maine to the Carolinas… I remember one station remarking that he lived in West Virginia and the temp was 31 deg F and they had 12 inches of wet snow snapping branches and bringing wires down…
For those of you not in a colder area… In the fall before all the leaves fall off the trees an early snowstorm puts extra weight on the trees as the leaves collect the snow… Add to this a gusty wind and the snow covered leaves are now a sail that puts lots of pressure on the branches… The branches snap and fall to the ground…. or across Hydro/phone lines… They also have been known to take out antennas the same way…
So in conclusion…
So what I heard was about 4 hours worth of good Comminicators doing what they had trained for… There was no panic in the voices… There was urgency…. In my opinion the groups did an excellent job of providing communications under less than stellar conditions… No exercise can prepare you for operating in the field when your field is underwater and blowing away…
Bravo Zulu to all concerned
73bob
Note- updated at 9am as I found out that I had to edit out some broken links… sorry bout that
bob
I got the following of the New York ARECS Website. This is a group that works closely with the City Emergency Managers and are well organised. In a city the size of New York they have to be…
Just food for thought…
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| At an FCC conference in May 2011, FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate mentioned that “When Everything Else Fails. Amateur Radio often times is our last line of defense.” He said thatwe often rely on cell phones and public safety communication for their resilience, but we must remember that they fail–“They do, they have, they will!” Mr. Fugate went on to recommend that “A strong amateur radio community,” “be plugged into” emergency communications plans. He emphasized that amateur radio should be included in emergency planning, because “When you need amateur radio, you really need them.” In closing he included amateur radio communications as part of a broad mission which has one objective–to meet the needs of survivors of a disaster. |
 |
Here in New York City, 9/11 had the effect of emphasizing an already significant role of amateur radio with respect to public service. Amateur radio was active with the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management, under Director Jerome Hauer, throughout the 1990’s and early part of this decade. In recent years, amateur radio has played a greater role in various regional public events and emergency activations across the United States. Radio Amateurs remain highly relevant and have the ability to assist in emergencies for the following reasons:
2012 FCC report concerning Amateur Radio
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Glad to see we are appreciated….
And to my readers from Ontario remember that the ARES Ontatio SET will be starting later today…(Saturday at 10am edst)
73bob
It seems we all (by nature) have a quest for knowledge. We have access to 24 hour a day news via several media outlets. These are usually fed via SAT or Cable TV. We need information… We thrive on it… We have to know…
More and more people are now also using Twitter and Facebook as part of their information highway. Locally in Ottawa…. @OttawaPolice and @OttawaFirePIO along with @Ottawacity keep us in the know via Twitter. Most of our local councillors along with most City Managers also are on Twitter so we have the capabilities to be informed if they can get the message out…
That brings me to the reason for this post…
To see what I mean check out:
Now normally our intrastructure as it pertains to communications is pretty durable… Excellent and stable cell service…. Internet strong…. The same could be said for our cable networks so in most cases the message will get out….
But every now and again we seem to get one of those “OH SH!T events“… That could be defined as as Eastern Ontario during the ICE STORM of the late 1990s…. Californina during a couple of the EARTHQUAKES…. The Gulf Coast and the Eastern Seaboard during HURRICANE season…. You get the idea….
We have to train, we have to prepare for that one in a million chance that all does fail…. because that when it does fail…. they (thats the guys who are saying “OH SH!T“) will really be glad to see us and the radio gear getting set up…
With the upcoming Ontario ARES SET (Simulated Emergency Test) on October 13th I just thought I would remind you what we are actually testing for… and why…
Because ” !T ” could fail…
73bob
After looking at my day planner I seem to wonder where we are expected to find the time for anything these days… Today is October 5th and we are just getting ready to start the Canadian Thanksgiving Long Weekend (October 6,7,8th) and I am finding that I am getting fairly busy for the rest of the month…
Oct 6,7 & 8th- Canadian Thanksgiving Long Weekend
Oct 10th- Ottawa Valley QRP Society Monthly Meeting
Oct 10th- Ottawa Amateur Radio Club Monthly Meeting
Oct 13th- Ontario ARES SET Exercise
Oct 14th- Ottawa ARES Exercise
Oct 18th- Ottawa Valley Mobile Radio Club Monthly Meeting
Oct 20th- Eastern Ontario Scouts Jamboree on the Air
Oct 27 & 28th- CQ WW SSB Contest
And just for good measure you include three Medical appointments for me and a couple for Liz it does make for a busy month. Hopefully I can find some spare time to work on my WAS and DXCC before the CQ Contest to make sure that everything still works…
73bob
Picture taken at the end of the Demonstration by the Security Guard for the Hospital and I’m not sure whose camera he used…
Anyway Left to Right… Earl VE3IMP EC SDG ARES, Tracy VA3TXN SAR Global 1 , VA3QV Bob , Louise Quenneville Glengarry Memorial Hospital Emergency Planner, Guy Vaillencourt Township of North Glengarry CEMC, VA3JSF Stan SDG ARES, VA3JO John SDG ARES and VE3HTR Doug SDG ARES
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If you remember back to my post of last Friday where I mentioned…
Earlier today I participated in a COMMS Demo for the Glengarry Memorial Hospital in Alexandria Ontario. The demo was to give them a view as to what equipment might be available to them to assist with communications in a emergency situation if they were to partner up with the Amateur Community…
The DEMO included 2m fm (analog), 2m fm (DSTAR) 2m fm (APRS) and 40m ssb. The VHF Bands were stronger than the HF Bands so everything worked as expected and their Emergency Prepardness Officer has lots of info now to continue with her tasking.
For us it was a group from the United Counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry (SDG ARES) and a Group from Ottawa coming together to successfully demo what I concider to be a great hobby and public safety resource.
I think it went well and a new partnership (GMH and SDG ARES) has been formed…
You might also remember that I had made mention of several cameras being there and as soon as I could find some copies I would share them with you…
So here they are…
Louise (left), Bob (center) and Guy (right) discussing the mornings events
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Earl (left), Doug (center) and Louise (right) discussing the event.
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The portable APRS station of VA3TXN
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Left to right Guy, Louise, Tracy, Bob and Earl at the HF Radio Station.
Rig was a FT 897 with a Par End Fed antenna running off the Luggage Rack on the SUV
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Now I am sure that there are more pictures out there but… so far they have not made it to my inbox and I wanted to share what I had with you while it was still a current event rather than History so the above is what I had available and now you have it…
I am also believing that this week we might be getting some Press about this courtesy of the local Glengarry News which is a weekly paper. If this happens I will share as many details as I have with you…
I would also be amazed if someone did not write this up for TCA in the near future…
73bob
Yesterday (Saturday October 3rd) this station did participate in the 2009 Simulated Emergency Test (SET) which was run in the Province of Ontario as joint venture with the Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES Ontario) and Emergency Management Ontario (EMO) with the assistance of the National Traffic System for Ontario (NTS) (Ontario Phone Net).
I did not participate at the local level but did participate at the Provincal Level being part of a Province Wide 80m HF Radio Net that did operate to pass formal NTS Traffic between various points in the province of Ontario.
In these days of Internet, Text Messaging, Cell Phones and all sorts of other Hi-Tech goodies our basic communications seem to have gone by the wayside. Traffic that used to go via HF Voice now goes out Digitally using Winlink 2000 and Pactor which also can connect to the Internet.
NTS Voice and CW communications seem to be heading towards the way of the Dinosaurs…
But yesterday we showed we could still do it. We put up with poor band conditions on 80m, we put up with high static levels and poor hearing with “senior operators” (I fall into that catagory), we put up with new operators who are not used to HF Communications but we welcome them, as they are the future of our hobby….
Stations checked in from all areas of the province, North West Ontario, Northern Ontario, North East Ontario, Eastern Ontario, Central Ontario, the Golden Horseshoe, the GTA, Southern Ontario and South Western Ontario and traffic was passed. Not always quickly… but the traffic was passed…
Now jumping on my soapbox for a few lines I will agree with the people grumbling out there that are thinking that we will never get used and that its an old inefective system. Hell, your most likely right….
BUT….
There is a very small chance that we will have a major infrastructure failure… where all the new toys will not work…. and then it will a good thing that a few of us “old pharts” will be able to step in and keep things moving, yes moving slowly and ineffeciently but moving never the less.
Many times in the past when people have been commenting on my poor antennas I have commented that I would rather be on the air with a poor antenna than not on the air.
I believe that I would rather have a final backup system up and running when “all else fails” than be standing on a hill praying for a cell site….
Its slow, its outdated, and it still works….
NTS…
73bob
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(if you are interested there will be detailed report after the 2nd part of the test concludes on Wednesday October 7th on the Ontario Phone Net Blog- http://ontariophonenet.wordpress.com Look for it most likely by the following weekend.
Although we are getting plenty of warning its predicted that sometime on Sunday Evening to Monday that Hurricane Bill will visit the Province of Newfoundland.
Picture courtesty of Canadian Hurricane Center
If you follow the animated graphic map HERE you will see that on the way to Newfoundland it will give the other Maritime Provinces a glancing blow.
Now on to the radio side of things keeping in mind that this is still an Amateur Radio Blog.
The Maritimes (VA1/VE1/VE9/VY2/VO1/VO2) all have an excellent ARES based Amateur Radio Group working with their Provincal Emergency Measures Organisations. If there is any communications it will most likely occur in the VHF Band as they would be using 2m fm for the most part.
There could be some HF Activity and you could look to the Maritime Net frequency of 3,750, and in Newfoundland look for activity on 3.740 with the Newfoundland and Labrador Evening Traffic Net who would be sharing the Frequency with the EMO (Emergency Measures Organisation) Net. To be honest I do not expect to hear much 80m traffic as their VHF Repeater systems are so good.
There is still a ways to go before the arrival of Bill but its better to get prepared sooner than later.
More on this closer to the arrival date…
73bob
