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In This Issue:

 
•Oregon 2015 QuakeEX SETs: A Recap
•Maintain a Strict Listening Watch
•Typhoon! -- A Lesson in Pacific Island Disaster Relief
•Amateur Radio Club Helps Promote Diabetes Awareness
•Veterans' Day Month: HDSCS Loses One of Its Own

ARES Briefs, Links
Hams Support Air Force Marathon (11/6/2015); Putting Contesting to Work for Your Public Service Team (10/30/2015); Amateur Radio to Have a Presence at National Tribal Assistance Coordination Group Workshop (10/27/2015); National Emergency Net Active as Category 5 Hurricane Patricia Nears Mexico (10/23/2015); Radio Amateurs in Mexico Prepare as Powerful Hurricane Patricia Nears Landfall (10/23/2015); Amateur Radio Was Part of Typhoon Koppu Response in the Philippines (10/19/2015)
Oregon 2015 QuakeEX SETs: A Recap

Next spring, FEMA Region X, county emergency management agencies statewide, many others and Oregon ARES/RACES will participate in the FEMA Cascadia Rising exercise. This is a functional exercise that will play out what might happen should/when a major earthquake strike the Pacific Northwest. The drill scenario anticipates widespread loss of normal communication modes such as cell phones, Internet and public safety radio as well as major power outages.
To prepare for Cascadia Rising, Oregon ARES/RACES conducted two statewide simulated emergency tests (SETs) patterned after the FEMA scenario playbook. The spring 2015 SET involved 24 counties, four cities, ten hospitals, about 300 ARES/ACS/other volunteers and moved about 1,700 messages to various addresses (mostly by HF Winlink Pactor) during the six hour SET. All traffic went by simplex VHF (no repeaters), HF SSB and HF Winlink Pactor to out of state gateways. All of this was done from within state/county/city EOCs statewide. The fall 2015 SET played the same scenario but mostly from the field on generators/batteries and in stormy weather. The November SET involved 16 counties and about 250 volunteers.
The differences between the two SETs were striking, proving that operating from the field, Field Day style, is far more challenging. During high winds and heavy rain, HF antennas were blown down, tents were flooded and operators got uncomfortable. We discovered that under field conditions with no Internet, if you haven't updated your modem firmware lately or obtained your Winlink password, you are off the air. Repairing broken HF wire antennas in the wind and rain means that you hope you have that backup antenna! And if the generator won't start you have no power. If your people aren't trained or prepared for contingencies, these problems just seem to multiply.
We've learned that as much as you might think you are "ready" to go into the field in a major disaster like a magnitude 9 earthquake, it takes constant preparation and training to be truly "ready." Those that have participated in Oregon's Quake EX SETs have learned a lot and have a lot more work to do. It was a realistic training experience. More information is available on-line at Oregon ARES/RACES on the Cascadia Rising and SET pages. -- John Core, KX7YT, Oregon ARES/RACES SET Coordinator, KX7YT@...
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Maintain a Strict Listening Watch

"We have two ears and one mouth and they are to be used in proportion." - anonymous. In the days where every ship of credibility carried a Morse code set, the radio operator was required to maintain radio silence on the international distress frequency of 500 KHz for a three minute interval, at 15 and 45 minutes of every hour. As radiotelephone came into being a 3 minute watch was maintained at 0 and 30 minutes. If the disaster your vessel encountered fit within the 30 minute schedule, your weak, plaintive CQD (later, SOS) had a good chance of being heard amidst all the commercial traffic and noise.
Today, satellite communications systems have forced these "antiquated" structures into retirement, but not entirely. A few years ago I enjoyed a tour of a huge container ship at Boston Harbor. After pleasantries with the Captain I asked for permission to meet his Radio Officer. "Our Engineer holds that title," he told me, "but in reality," with the Captain putting his hands on a piece of satellite gear, "this is our Radio Officer." Paying deference to the captain and the high tech gear, I then headed straight for the radio room - thankfully they still had one -- and was warmly greeted by a middle-aged man of professional bearing in full white uniform. There, in a large space, were three racks, each with a high powered HF transmitter. The wise officer revealed his best-kept secret to safety: "Should we be going down," he said, opening a small desk drawer, "I'm using this." A rather sturdy Morse hand key was revealed, and there began an understanding between us. "The satellites don't talk back," he told me. "This does."
Quiet Periods, Listening Watches and Amateur Radio
He knew about the quiet periods and listening watches of old and the stories of lives lost and saved. He also knew that the necessity of maintaining a strict listening watch has not been lost to time and technology. In fact, it's a greater necessity than we may have considered in our own Amateur Radio service. The very first Amateur Radio public service event I was responsible to organize included this concept. "Let's keep an ear on the radio, so we might be less tied up with getting your attention and have more time to pass actual traffic." Time and experience reveals that other problems such as the limitations of newer digital modes are mitigated by the maintenance of the strict listening watch.
My local club, the Police Amateur Radio Team (PART) of Westford, Massachusetts, operates a 2-meter analog repeater that is a fantastic performer. It's reliable. It has a wide reach. It is well maintained. Still, there are instances where the combination of interference, distance from the repeater site, and operator technique combine adversely.
The Boston Athletic Association Boston Marathon communications system offers excellent fodder for study. With almost 300 communications volunteers and a few dozen unique repeaters and other radio-communication systems all pressed to the limit within a very short time span, anything and everything that can go wrong generally does go wrong. I have, as a volunteer (this is my 15th year), listened in pain to dreadfully long attempts at getting a simple message between two units, which generally begin with several unanswered calls, adding to the mess. In 2015, in a leadership capacity, I targeted the only variables within our immediate control: the operator on both ends of the circuit. Maintaining a strict listening watch became a mantra, and it will continue as long as we hold a radio in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.
At a public service event many of us clip our radio to the belt. Body fading, the same physical phenomena that aids us in Fox Hunting, attenuates what's coming in and of course what goes out. I now encourage my Net Control Operators (NCO) to request that field units "raise the radio over your head and try again" in the first instance where that unit is unreadable. This solves the input problem in almost all cases. With sufficient practice, it's hoped that awareness will spread, and the reminders be made obsolete.
The output problem - the ability to receive the repeater output in the field - is rarely that the (stronger) repeater transmission cannot be heard. It's simply that the operator is not focused, not listening for the call. The operator is chatting with friends, tired and glazed, or listening to other communications. One volunteer insisted that he bring along another radio so he might "listen in on public safety." "That's nice," I replied, "but it's not in our job description." I feared that, while lost to more exciting radio banter, my volunteer would lose awareness - of our situation and responsibility -- so necessary to maintain. I was right. He was often difficult to reach and generally ineffective. Hopefully it was a lesson learned.
Sure, our work can sometimes involve simply waiting for that one call, and this can be boring. But think of how interesting we can make our listening watch when we form a picture in our mind of what's happening at the event overall, and what has happened in the past, to grasp that we perform a life or death function. 100% focus on our duty and assignment is critical to our "client" event officials being able to secure the public's safety as best they can, at the rest stop, intersection, or Red Cross facility to which we are assigned.
Maintaining that strict listening watch repeatedly overcomes the limitations inherent in our technical communications method, promotes situational awareness, improves our effectiveness to the teams we support, and in the end is a discipline that keeps us focused on the reason we're standing underneath that silly orange hat in the first place: to provide instant, reliable communications.
So maintain that strict listening watch. Your performance and overall satisfaction, and public safety at the next public service event will be all the better for it. -- Mark Richards, K1MGY [Richards serves as a member of the Boston Athletic Association Communications Committee, and is a frequent public service event volunteer and organizer. He is employed in the technical design and product development of hand-held environmental monitoring instrumentation].
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