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Subj: ARES E-Letter September 18, 2019
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From: CX2SA@CX2SA.SAL.URY.SOAM
To : ARES@WW
The ARES E-Letter September 18, 2019
Editor: Rick Palm, K1CE
-ARES, Others Respond to Hurricane Dorian
-Save the Dates: Communications Academy, Training for the Pacific Northwest
-Former Section Manager Recognized by City Commission
-Antenna Design Defies RFI-laden EOC
-Early History of Amateur Emergency Communications
-K1CE for a Final: Dorian Response Observation; Two Hundred Meters and
Down; Larry Price, W4RA; Red Cross Shelters and ARES
-ARRL Resources Available
ARES, Others Respond to Hurricane Dorian
----------------------------------------
Colleague Rick Lindquist, WW1ME, of the ARRL news desk, and others in the
field, diligently reported as Hurricane Dorian marched its historic track
earlier this month. Summaries and reports can be found in the links listed
below.
The website page www.arrl.org/2019-Hurricanes, includes information and news
summarizing the preparations and response by ARES and other Amateur Radio
volunteers who are supporting (or have supported) emergency communications
in areas that may be (or have been) impacted by 2019 hurricanes. Operators
provide critical communications capability used for relaying life-saving
information and to assist with preparedness, response and recovery
activities. Additionally, radio amateurs throughout affected regions often
provide firsthand accounts of storm impact and ongoing recovery needs.
9/7/2019 | Hurricane Watch Net Activates as Dorian Exits the US for Maritime
Canada
9/6/2019 | Hurricane Watch Net Suspends Operation; May Reactivate on Saturday
9/6/2019 | FCC Extends Waiver Permitting Use of PACTOR 4 for Hurricane
Relief Efforts
9/4/2019 | Storm Watch Continues Along Southeastern US Coast
9/4/2019 | Tracking Dorian: Hurricane Watch Net Hunkered Down for the Long
Haul
9/3/2019 | FCC Readies for Hurricane Dorian
9/2/2019 | ARES on Alert for Hurricane Dorian's Possible Arrival
9/2/2019 | FCC Grants Temporary Waiver Permitting Use of PACTOR 4 for
Hurricane Response and Relief
9/1/2019 | Major Hurricane Dorian Prompts Sustained Activations
8/31/2019 | Florida ARES Members Volunteer in Preparation for Hurricane Dorian
8/30/2019 | Hurricane Watch Net Set to Activate on Saturday
8/29/2019 | Amateur Radio Resources Ready as Dorian Poised to Become a Major
Hurricane
8/28/2019 | Dorian Gains Hurricane Status, Forecast to Strengthen into Major
Storm
8/28/2019 | Amateur Radio Resources Muster as Dorian Nears Hurricane Strength
8/26/2019 | Hurricane Watch Net Set to Activate as Caribbean Prepares for
Dorian
During the emergency management phase of Hurricane Dorian, Bill Jorgensen,
Director of Public Safety for Williamson County, Tennessee, thanked AUXCOMM
operators: "This morning at 0700 we sent out a 3-person Communications Unit
(COMU) to support Tennessee Task Force 2 en route to the east coast for 10
days. This unit consists of a 100' tower trailer, operational logistics
trailer and a 45 kV gen set along with a mix of COML/COMT/ITSL (Technology
Service Unit Leader) personnel. Modes and frequencies employed included
VHF/UHF/700/800/HF SHARES/Winlink including FirstNet/Verizon and some
satellite capabilities. Thank you to all the AuxComm volunteers that
supported this deployment before we left and those that will continue to
support the Winlink system while deployed."
Steve Waterman, K4CJX, DHS NCC SHARES Winlink Administrator and FEMA Region
4 Regional Emergency Communications Coordination Working Group (RECCWG)
AuxComm Committee Chair commented "It is yet another shining, but typical
example of the influence of Amateur Radio's role in assisting our civil
authorities and their critical infrastructure partners during mass casualty
events." The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency (TEMA) COMU unit,
comprised of Amateur Radio volunteers, worked to deploy assets also.
Save the Dates: Communications Academy, Training for the Pacific Northwest
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The 22nd Annual Communications Academy will be held on April 25-26, 2020, in
Seattle, Washington, with the theme of "If Cascadia Rises, Will We Fall?" -
part of a three-year continuum building up to Cascadia Rising 2022, a
National Level Exercise (NLE), and statewide exercise. The Communications
Academy delivers education, resources and training opportunities focused on
interoperability across the communications spectrum. It is two days of
training and information on various aspects of emergency communications.
ARES, Auxiliary Communications Service (ACS), EOC Support Teams, Radio
Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES), Civil Air Patrol, Coast Guard
Auxiliary, REACT, CERT and anyone interested in emergency communications are
encouraged to attend.
Former Section Manager Recognized by City Commission
----------------------------------------------------
Steve Szabo, WB4OMM, former ARRL Northern Florida Section Manager, was
recognized recently the Daytona Beach city commissioners. "City Spotlight:
Keeping our great community prepared and safe -- In emergency situations,
knowledge and experience are vital, but it also takes a calm presence and a
steady hand. Luckily for the City of Daytona Beach, it has Capt. Steve Szabo
at the helm when it comes to emergency management. Planning year round for
emergency incidents - whether natural or man-made - is a passion for this
professional who works out of the Daytona Beach Police Department
headquarters. Steve's love for emergencies began at 16 years old when he
gained experience as an amateur radio operator. He started at the police
department in 1981 and worked his way up into many leadership positions.
During his career he served as the city's night shift incident commander for
the 1998 Wildfires and worked eight tornadoes and 21 hurricanes. Most
notably he was the city's emergency operations center director during
hurricanes Charley, Frances and Jeanne in 2004, Hurricane Wilma in 2005, the
Christmas day tornado in 2006, Hurricane Matthew in 2016, Hurricane Irma in
2017 and Hurricane Dorian. He also actively contributes to the contingency
planning for special events including seven presidential visits to the city.
While we can't prevent disasters from happening, we can control how we
respond to them, and the City of Daytona Beach is proud to have had Steve at
the helm of emergency management all of these years protecting our residents."
Antenna Design Defies RFI-laden EOC
-----------------------------------
Alachua County (Gainesville area), Florida, ARES members proved that a
temporary antenna just tens of yards away from the heavy RFI environment of
the EOC had far less electromagnetic interference (noise) than even an
improved rooftop antenna they had been using. Here's what they did next:
"So we set to work to put in a permanent antenna there," reported Gordon
Gibby, KX4Z, a project manager and ARES leading light for the county and
state." On August 11, five of us assembled and waded into the thick
underbrush to put up the 270-foot long off-center-fed homemade inverted vee
wire antenna using a 4:1 balun. The bazooka-like bicycle-pump-powered device
that Leland Gallup, AA3YB, used to place our line over the desired tree limb
(on the first try) was amazingly effective. Getting the long #14 stranded
house-wiring through the dense woods was quite an effort."
"Once we got it up, the noise measurements were excellent as we had hoped.
Setting up one of our HF go-boxes on the spot, we proceeded to make day-time
80-meter digital connections to two Winlink gateways on the band that were
in NVIS range. We had previously been unable to make those connections with
the rooftop antenna due to 20dB excess noise levels at those frequencies."
Thanks to the good work of the radio crew, a tension line was established
from the EOC building to a suitable tree, and the coax into the radio room
was rerouted to the new antenna, named the Chigger Antenna because all of
the crew was scratching chigger bites for days afterwards.
Early History of Amateur Emergency Communications
-------------------------------------------------
To fully appreciate anything, it's helpful to understand its history. For
amateur emergency communications, that is certainly true; however, it is
also simply fascinating. Not much has changed in over a hundred years of the
radio amateur's role in the disaster and emergency communications arena,
except for ever-advancing technology and technique. The following are some
gold nuggets I found from reading -- and re-reading and highlighting - ARRL
Assistant Secretary Clinton B. DeSoto's classic 1936 book, Two Hundred
Meters and Down--The Story of Amateur Radio.
On just the second page of the book, DeSoto, in describing the typical radio
amateur of 1936, offers up an adventurous band of free spirits involved in
the radio art for the simple love of it, but turning serious about
altruistic service to humanity when it came time to "saving a hundred lives
in a fever-ravished Alaskan village . . ." Technical advancement of the art
is their contribution to humanity, too, but with an unparalleled service "of
matchless heroism in flood and disaster, . . . with their great emergency
system of communications carrying on when all others have failed. In many
years no community in distress in this country has been without valiant aid
from Amateur Radio."
DeSoto called emergency communications by amateurs the "Flower of the Art."
Early history of amateur communications also involves the handling of
traffic, upon which, among other things, the ARRL was formed in 1914.
Traffic handling by relaying is the essence of emergency communications, of
course. "Floods, hurricanes, earthquakes - disasters of all varieties
provide a large part of the amateur message total in the form of emergency
traffic. Amateurs almost invariably form the last line of communication in
times of natural emergency; this has been true in more than forty major and
a large number of minor disasters in the past twenty years [that's from 1916
to 1936 - ed.] . Tragedy, drama, human interest incidents of all kinds,
provocative of both laughter and tears, have all been logged in these
hard-worked amateur radio stations."
DeSoto described the predominant characteristic of the amateur is his
altruism: and that certainly is still true today, a hundred years later.
In 1913, on the heels of the research and development of radio design of the
time, the primary interest had become application and practice, namely
communication and the handling of messages. Amateurs occasionally handled
traffic for third parties.
In March, 1913, "a possible new activity for amateur radio made itself
apparent when amateur stations successfully bridged the communications gap
surrounding a large isolated area left by a severe windstorm in the Midwest.
Amateur stations at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and at Ohio
State University, in conjunction with numerous individual amateurs in and
around the stricken area, handled widespread communications . . ."
Message handling, especially the organized relaying of those messages, for
fun, friends, and in time of emergency formed the basis of the ARRL, which
was to be founded the following year as the needed national organization to
represent the amateur's interests. Operating speeds increased with the
resulting increased proficiency, and advantages of national representation
were manifest.
With significant service with proficiency already provided in times of
emergency, the government and the ARRL worked together to prepare for war
and the necessary radio operators to support it. In 1917, amateurs were
ordered off the air, and as the US went to war, thousands of amateurs with
the requisite emergency and message handling experience served the war
effort until the Armistice in 1918.
Amateurs were back on the air in late 1919, and a year later, had turned to
a new activity, the precursor to many services rendered today to law
enforcement and emergency management: "amateur police radio," assisting the
police with major crime solving efforts, including stolen automobiles.
In 1922, State governors hailed Amateur Radio operators as a "reserve of
radio minute men for national emergencies."
In 1929, a new Army-Amateur Radio System organized networks across the
country to assist the Army and American Red Cross for disaster relief
communications.
In 1931, after years of experimentation to promote long distance
communications, relative to the five-meter band, a few hams realized that
there was a place for communications of just a few miles, or "line of
sight," a realization that would serve as the bedrock for countless ARES
groups forever more.
In 1933, new regulations permitted mobile operation at UHF; informal
portable operation was also permitted.
Early Emergency Responses
Amateur Radio disaster responses from1919 to 1936 are summarized in chapter
twenty - "Emergencies." DeSoto wrote "Since 1919 Amateur Radio has been the
principal if not the only communication link following nearly forty major
and a great number of less consequential disasters." He cites the Great
Flood of March 1936 as the greatest amateur emergency public service of the
time. As flooding expanded, normal communications were cut off, and amateur
communication systems expanded flexibly and spontaneously to meet the need
in the disaster that affected the entire eastern US. Many were based on the
Army-Amateur, Naval Reserve and the ARRL Emergency Corps, forerunner of
today's ARES program. At the peak of activity, it was estimated that a
thousand amateur stations were engaged in providing effective emergency
communications for prompt warning of authorities, immediate evacuation of
threatened areas, and expedient supply of relief and rescue assistance. By
the end of 1936, amateurs had earned nation-wide recognition for effecting
communications where all other means had failed.
Conclusions
In the last chapter of his book, DeSoto expresses what still rings true
today: The right of Amateur Radio to exist comes from its public utility.
Operators perform a continuing public service in that they train themselves
in a highly-specialized and difficult field to be of use to the nation in
time of emergency.
K1CE for a Final: Dorian Response Observation; Two Hundred Meters and Down;
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Larry Price, W4RA; Red Cross Shelters and ARES
----------------------------------------------
I listened to the hurricane nets over the course of Hurricane Dorian's
destructive path. Once again, net and operator discipline was exemplary: the
nets were kept clear for transmissions from potentially weak stations in the
affected areas. I did hear one station not in any sensitive areas ask net
control for confirmations of some reports, and another time, he advised the
net control station that another storm was tracking of the coast of Africa
and the net may want to monitor its progress, too. Net control appropriately
responded by informing the station that the mission of the net was limited
to taking reports from Dorian-affected stations. The lesson: Do NOT transmit
on hurricane nets unless you are reporting on storm conditions you are
actually experiencing, or if instructed by the NCS to do so. Period.
_____________
Want a thrill like no other for less than $16 and a few hours on a Sunday
afternoon? Do what I did and read DeSoto's 200 Meters and Down - The Story
of Amateur Radio. Published in 1936, it covers the discovery of radio
physics, experimentation, application, and the breathtaking development of
Amateur Radio in the dawn of the art. The main takeaway, among many others,
for me was the degree to which amateurs and Amateur Radio operators were
involved in the development of all radio communications, including the
broadcasting service. Pick up the book, and find yourself amazed of the
early pioneering work of radio amateurs, the kind of pioneering that still
goes on today.
______________
Larry E. Price, W4RA
Last but certainly not least, I was saddened to learn of the passing of ARRL
and IARU President Emeritus Larry Price, W4RA. It is difficult to think of
any one ARRL volunteer who worked harder, and for as long, for the
organizations and for Amateur Radio than Dr. Price. I had the privilege of
working with him as a HQ staff administrative resource in the 1980s and 90s:
he was motivated by and demanding of only the highest standards of work
product to the benefit of the organizations and all of us in Amateur Radio.
______________
In the October issue of QST, on page 86, you'll find an excellent interview
with Jim Piper, N6MED, the Volunteer Health Services Liaison to Amateur
Radio for the American Red Cross Gold Country Region in northern California.
I encourage you to read it. I should note that the opinions expressed in the
interview are strictly Jim's and not those of the Red Cross.
ARRL Resources Available
------------------------
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