Jan 2021 Virtual Monthly Meeting: Hospital Net, Winter Field Day and Vacation Shack Tour!

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Our EC, Ed WB4RHQ dropped in briefly before travelling to the all-day ARRL Board Meeting – virtually on the other computer.

Presentations & Shack Tour!

Today Trey, KI4ZIN gave a presentation on the Hospital Net, discussing the organizations and people involved along with how and when the net is conducted. The net takes place primarily on the MTEARS UHF linked repeater system and provides backup communications options for facilities and primary communications in the event of an emergency. Trey also mentioned they are always looking for new volunteers to help out. Get in touch with Trey or use the Contact form on the website if you are interested in getting involved.

Cliff, N4CCB ran through a more detailed overview of Winter Field Day this year – expect to hear more from Cliff in future WCARES Notes e-mails and keep an eye on the Event Calender:

https://wcares.org/events/event/winter-field-day-2021/

Garry, W9WHF gave us a Virtual Shack Tour of his vacation setup and discussed the antennas, the radio gear and the challenge of salt coating pretty much everything. As this is a temporary spot he needed to be sure to leave it better than he found it which required some creative solutions, particularly with 4 radios and 4 antennas! The discussion about low power supply voltage at the radio due to corrosion will be of interest to anyone, even without the salt air.

Hospital Net – Trey Spain, KI4ZIN

https://youtu.be/AsQ93aLDIOU

Winter Field Day 2021 – Cliff Batson, N4CCB

https://youtu.be/gEfw8C741EI

Virtual Ham Shack Tour # 7 – Garry Decker, W9WHF

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK1MFQR81mI

These and other presentations will now always be listed under the new:

Library & Special Interests --> Presentations

section of the website.

ARRL News – Ed, WB4RHQ: ARES volunteers monitoring & standing by to assist

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http://www.arrl.org/news/arrl-ares-volunteers-standing-by-to-assist-if-needed-in-wake-of-nashville-blast

ARRL ARES Volunteers Standing By to Assist if Needed in Wake of Nashville Blast
12/26/2020

ARRL Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) volunteers remain ready to deploy in Williamson County, Tennessee, in the aftermath of an apparently intentional explosion early on Christmas morning in downtown Nashville. In addition to injuring at least three people and possibly killing one, damaging more than 40 buildings, and causing multiple water main breaks, the blast disrupted telecommunication systems. The explosion occurred in front of an AT&T switching facility. Nashville’s mayor has declared a civil emergency and imposed a curfew through December 27. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee called the damage “shocking” and has requested a federal emergency declaration. ARRL Vice Director and Williamson County Emergency Coordinator Ed Hudgens, WB4RHQ, who lives in Nashville, is monitoring the situation.

“Here in Nashville and the surrounding counties things are a bit of a mess still. The explosion did a lot more damage than was originally thought. AT&T now has about 30 mobile cell units deployed throughout the area.

“Since about 0730 yesterday, we have had monitoring nets up and running on the local analog repeaters and DMR repeaters. We have mainly been answering questions as best we can considering the limited information coming out from AT&T. My ARES group is ready to deploy to the Williamson County PSC to assist with communications for various county offices when the call comes.

“MTEARS [Middle Tennessee Emergency Amateur Repeater System] is holding nets on our DMR repeater system several times a day. The main repeater at the TEMA [Tennessee Emergency Management Agency] site is affected by the outage and fortunately we just last week got two DMR repeaters online in Williamson County, and all communications is going through them.

“WCARES is holding a continuous net on our five-repeater linked system to assist hams as needed. We are relaying news updates from AT&T and county governments and assisting callers on AT&T to implement wireless calling on their phones. In the future we may start taking traffic and routing it to the state nets.” The monitoring net on the linked system will remain u p until AT&T systems begin to come back online, he added.

Hudgens said that a net is active in Davidson County in Middle Tennessee, in addition to the WCARES net. “The MTEARS system is active and providing similar information. Our DMR repeater system is also up and running. The main repeater at TEMA is down because of the AT&T outage, but just last week we got two new DMR repeaters up in Williamson county and all DMR traffic is running through them,” Hudgens said.

ARRL Headquarters has reached out to Tennessee Section Manager David Thomas, KM4NYI, to offer any possible assistance.

A public address system on the RV broadcast continuous warning messages, counting down from 15 minutes. Police called to the site after reports of gunfire quickly evacuated residents. According to FEMA, outages with patient-tracking systems were reported, but there is no anticipated impact on patient care. Air traffic at Vanderbilt University Medical Center is on hold due to a communication outage, FEMA said. Vanderbilt University Medical Center is the only Level I trauma center serving the region.

AT&T is experiencing service outages across middle Tennessee and Kentucky, including with local 911 systems, cable TV, telephone, and internet customers. The Tennessee Emergency Operations Center is at partial activation, experiencing telephone and internet outages. The FBI is heading up the investigation. FEMA reports it’s received no requests for assistance.

New DMR repeaters and changes to WC4EOC-9

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From Hilton, W4GHD

I announced yesterday during the WCARES monthly meeting that Williamson County EMA will install two new DMR repeaters on Tuesday, Dec 22 2020 for use of WCARES and the entire Amateur Radio Community.

One repeater will be located at the Trinity/Nolensville Tower off Clovercroft Road (440.6875 +5); the second on the Tower just above Century Court (440.5875 +5) near downtown Franklin where the WCARES hub (444.025) is also located.

The Trinity/Nolensville Tower did not have an immediately available UHF antenna for the new DMR Repeater. So, we agreed to take WC4EOC-9 off the air temporarily to free up an antenna for the DMR repeater.

WC4EOC-8 will continue on the air at 145.050 with VARA FM 1200 and 1200 Packet to serve Winlink users.

Hopefully an additional UHF antenna will be installed at the Tower in the not too distant future and allow the UHF node to resume operations.

I know you will all join me in thanking Bill Jorgensen, K4COM and Director of the Williamson County Office of Public Safety and all the people at WCEMA and thank them for all they do for WCARES.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Hilton
W4GHD

Dec 2020 Virtual Monthly Meeting: DMR, ARES in TN, Winter FD, POTA and Shack Tour!

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Our EC, Ed WB4RHQ reported we had a record 63 attendees for this, the final Virtual Monthly Meeting of 2020 and he wished all a happy and safe holiday season. Thanks to everyone who took the time to join in for a great set of presentations.

DMR in Williamson Co. – Hilton Dean, W4GHD

Williamson Co. will be adding 2 DMR nodes on Tuesday, December 22, 2020:

  • Trinity site(*)
  • Century Court where the WCARES 444.025MHz hub is located

Thanks to Bill Jorgenson and the Office of Public Safety and also to Andrew Gossett, AK4FA who got the boards programmed. Look for upcoming e-mail with more details.
* The WC4EOC-9 UHF antenna will be used for the Trinity site DMR so WC4EOC-9 will be offline until another antenna can be added to this tower, likely in 2021.

Winter Field Day – Cliff Batson (N4CCB)

  • We are very fortunate that the Winter Field Day organizers will allow aggregation of scores like the ARRL did for Field Day in June. So everyone who includes the same group name will get their scores aggregated for a combined group score. You’ll need to decide how adventurous you want to be. Running off mains from inside your house with 100W on SSB and getting 100 QSOs would get you 200 points; running outside on batteries or a generator would get you 3200 points for those same QSOs. Something to think about! Cliff will have much more to say in the January meeting.

Presentations & Shack Tour!

The State of ARES in TN – Jim Snyder, AJ4NO, Tennessee Section Emergency Coordinator

https://youtu.be/ANNPMG9LBG0

Jim generously provided a copy of his presentation as well; you can read the PDF version here.

Parks On The Air – Tom Suggs N4MTE

https://youtu.be/brnt8Zpshto

and Tom generously provided a copy of his presentation so check this out as well:

Parks on the Air – WCARES Presentation by Tom, N4MTE

Virtual Shack Tour – Doug Miller (W4DML)

https://youtu.be/7edSXoYbwjQ

You can find videos of past meetings on the WCARES Media channel on Youtube .

Nov. 2020 Virtual Monthly Meeting: What’s in a bag, FT8 & FT4, Shack Tour!

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(RJ’s tour video has been updated.)

This month Kevin, KO4HPE has a presentation on planning and building an effective go-bag, Hilton, W4GHD gives a Technical Presentation on digital modes FT8 and FT4 and RJ, KC4LRR takes us on a tour of his radio shack and laboratory!

What’s in a bag: Preparedness
By Kevin Fitch (KO4HPE)

https://youtu.be/64WfO0iPGeQ

FT8 & FT4
By Hilton Dean (W4GHD)

https://youtu.be/RtQXbVEqcP0

RJ Virtual Shack Tour
By RJ (KC4LRR)

https://youtu.be/TLCaljEq2FQ

Field Day 2020 Results are in!

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As you read in a recent WCARES Notes, our EC Ed Hudgens, WB4RHQ had exciting news:

“The results are in the Dec QST and WCARES wound up 5th in the country with 26.7K points. The winner, not that it was a contest, had over 45K. The others were slightly above us.”

The December QST ( http://www.arrl.org/qst ) should be in your hands now and includes a summary of the scores starting on page 69 (the digital edition of QST and the ARRL Field Day Page at http://field-day.arrl.org have the full listings.)

You can find a list of WCARES entries at http://field-day.arrl.org/fdentriesrcvd.php under

Williamson County (TN) ARES

Try Sort by Club Name to seem them grouped togther and be sure to check out the Soapbox section http://field-day.arrl.org/fdsoapbox.php to see comments and photographs from the day, including by our own Jeff, WB5WAJ!

Jeff, WB5WAJ presents the ARRL ARES Task Book

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From the ARRL Task Book introduction…

The Task Book is a working document that enable those ARES communicators electing to participate in the ARRL training plan, to track and document their training plan elements as they are completed toward the various levels of increasing proficiency.

As an ARES organization, WCARES will be using the Task Book for members who wish to advance their knowledge of emergency communications.

Jeff’s presentation has been added to the WCARES Youtube Channel – thanks Cliff, N4CCB:

https://youtu.be/ROomm5vKax0

To download the Task Book used by WCARES see the ARRL ARES Task Book – WCARES under

Join Us -> ARRL ARES Task Book – WCARES

 

WCARES presents Williamson Co. Public Library with ARRL publication set

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Mar 4, 2020 – As a part of the new Plant The Seed initiative by the Delta Division of the ARRL to get ARRL publications in libraries, the Williamson County Amateur Radio Emergency Service (WCARES) donated and presented an ARRL Library Book Set to Sheila Taylor KI4IBX and Sharon Reily of the main branch of the Williamson County Public Library system in Franklin, TN.

Ed Hudgens WB4RHQ, Emergency Coordinator for Williamson County and Jeff Standifer WB5WAJ presented the set of books.

This set will replace the over ten year old well-used set currently in their system. Included are the 24th edition of the Antenna Book, the 4th edition of the FCC Rules, the 2020 Handbook, the 12th edition of the Operating Manual, the 3rd edition of the RFI Book, the 2nd edition of Understanding Basic Electronics, and copies of the current edition of the Technician, General, and Extra Class License Manuals.

 

Delta Division – a presentation by WCARES EC

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WCARES EC Ed Hudgens, WB4RHQ gave the ARES Presentation at February’s Monthly Meeting.

The Tennessee Section of the ARRL is one of 71 sections in the United States and is part of the Delta Division which also includes Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

Ed gave an overview of the ARRL Divisions and Sections, the Delta Division and spoke about Division and Section nets, how the Sections coordinate during emergency events.

Ed announced a new division initiative to promote amateur radio through local libraries. Outreach to Williamson County libraries will include donations of ARRL book packages such as handbooks, license manuals and related materials and offers to host meetings about amateur radio and WCARES.

Ed’s Delta Division presentation includes more information (PDF)

Ed also talked about a recent presentation he gave at a meeting of the Cumberland Plateau Amateur Radio Club, CPARC. Dudley Pitts, KM4IYQ, past member of WCARES is now the CPARC club president. Ed spoke about WCARES and the Williamson Co. EMA, how the ARRL sees ARES evolving and some of the initiatives Ed has started during his tenure as WCARES Emergency Coordinator (EC).

Ed’s presentation to the CPARC meeting (PDF)