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The district 1 ARES group will be conducting a Simulated Emergency Test (SET) via packet radio on Saturday, February 23rd. Goals of the SET are:
The scenario is that severe weather has interrupted power to the local community. PGE has informed local authorities that major service lines need to be repaired and that partial service will be restored in 48 hours with full service could be up to two weeks in outlying areas. The Red Cross is in process of setting up emergency shelters. Local phone service has been interrupted and cell phone service is spotty.
Any ham wishing to participate is invited. If you are new to using packet, or don’t have a packet station of your own, don’t worry, there’s a plan in place just for you.
All hams are invited to attend!
(ARES is the Amateur Radio Emergency Service which provides vital communications during natural and man-made disasters.)
Due to illness, our January guest speaker had to be rescheduled for this month. Rachel Jacky from the Portland Fire Bureau will be the guest speaker at February meeting. Rachel is the Community Services Manager, and will be offering a presentation of Portland’s NET teams, operation during time of disaster, an overview of the communications plan for the city, and how the ham community can get involved.
For those Amateurs who are not familiar with the NET program, this will be a great opportunity to learn about what your neighbors are doing to help out our city during time of emergency.
NET teams have responded to flooding, have been stationed at pumping stations, filled sand bags, built dikes against flooding, responded during windstorms, have been stationed at strategic locations during the Rose Festival Parade, as well as other civic related activities.
For those of you who were present last month, please come again, this will be a good opportunity to hear about the NET teams, and how we as Amateur operators can get involved, and help out our community in some new ways. Everyone is welcome, hams, non-hams, ARES members as well as those in the Net teams.
The PARC Brochure is finally done. Awhile back, Glen, KC7MBM had a great idea. PARC needed to have a brochure to help prospective members and the general public learn about the club. Taking his idea and building on it, the PARC brochure is finally here, and (hopefully) ready for the public. Look inside your issue for the brochure, remove it, and give it to a friend. You can still read the rest of the sPARC gap, file it away, toss it, or use it for it’s intended purpose as a coaster for your favorite beverage in your ham shack - but give that brochure to a future member!
Voice: 146.840 –600 MHz
146.940 –600 MHz
Packet: 147.180 +600 MHz (PARC-7 repeater)
144.910 (W7LT PARC Node)
Its late fall, 1994, Private Eyes, Big John, and Hugh are collecting evidence from yet another failed amp from the 146.94 Repeater. Its time, says Hugh to do something about this crime, and Big John agrees. Although it's now well outdated, that was the birth of a successful power amplifier strategy chronicled in these files.
The first clue: Equal power outputs from both items
The cause of the repeated amplifier failures on 6.84 was of course
no mystery. Off the shelf amplifiers are not designed for continuous
duty use and will only last about a year on average. That of course
was the dilemma, an off the shelf would not work, and the few
commercial amps rated for continuous duty were very expensive.
Thus was born the idea of adapting a Micor mobile amp for use
on the repeater. One of the drawbacks with a mobile amp is they
were not designed for continuous duty, and clearly needed some
help with cooling, in fact some "local experts" announced
to the club that it would "never work".
After several months of additional evaluation, lab measurements
at OECO and other facilities the concept was proved workable.
The best proof however came in the fall of 2000, when the modified
6.84 Micor amp failed of old age. 6 years of heavy use in the
repeater without a failure does seem to prove the concept is workable.
The Micor amplifier is in reality 4 modules, the band-pass
filter, the amplifier board, the low-pass filter and the SWR,
power control board. Each of these modules plug into others somewhat
like leggos. For that reason the decision was made to use the
original amplifier casting to house the components and to add
a heat spreader to provide additional cooling. The goal of the
project was not to make it all look pretty, but to make a reliable
continuous duty amplifier that worked on a budget of less than
$200!
Most of the work was mechanical and shown best by pictures. Many
thanks go to Howard Barney of Bayhouse for the fine work that
he did to make the project a success.
John, K7RUN
The amplifier housing with one of the heat sinks removed.
Saturday 16th at the Rickreall Fairgrounds. PARC has a table and will be selling some items for the club. If you are interested in helping out, please let us know, we could use folks to table sit for an hour or so. Also, if you have items you’d like the club to sell for you, we can make arrangements to sell them for you for a small donation to the club.
Pete (W7PR) and Ed (KC7GFX) removed a 60 foot Rohn Tower from a residence in Portland. The owner of the property purchased the home of a former ham operator, and was doing some remodeling. Directly behind the home was a 60 foot tilt-over Rohn Tower which was not completely guyed. Over the 2001 Holidays, an adjacent Hi-Tower had fallen over due to high winds. News of the tower reached members of the club, and two of us decided to take it down. Disposition of the tower will be discussed at a future business meeting, it may be kept for future projects, used for beam antennas on field day, packet repeater stations, or sold.
Regular Club Meeting Friday Feb 15th
ARES Meeting Thursday, Feb 22nd
Club Net Monday’s at 7PM
ARES/RACES Net Wednesday’s at 7 PM
Club Breakfast Saturday, March 2nd
Rickreall Swapmeet Saturday, Feb 16th
Guest Speaker: Rachel Jacky, Portland Fire Bureau
One Liberty Center
650 NE Holladay Street
Portland, Oregon
(A few blocks SE of the Lloyd Center)
Everyone is welcome to attend (hams, and non-hams). Updates and changes will be announced on the PARC net, Monday at 7 PM on the 146.840 Repeater. All hams are encouraged to check in!
Here is a Schedule of Nets for all interested.
All Nets are handled on the 146.840- repeater.
Sunday: Handi-Hams Net 7 PM
Monday: PARC Weekly Net 7PM
Wednesday: ARES/RACES Net 7PM
Thursday: Youth Net 7PM
All Hams are welcome to check in or listen to any Net
Both on-line training and hands-on assistance training sessions will be available.
Training:
I. On-line training available during and after exercise.
a. District 1 repeater and simplex frequency’s will be staffed to provide assistance via voice
b. Packet test stations will be staffed for testing and direct feedback
II. Hands on training
a. Multiple sites staffed to provide assistance to new packet operators that have more problems then can be solve via voice.
b. Amateur radio operators with out packet stations are encouraged to attend the local hands on assistance training.
c. County Emergency Coordinators will choose the training sites as appropriate
III. Message Types:
a. Red Cross
i. Evacuation centers
1. Status to EOC
2. Equipment needed
3. Names and numbers of displaced people
4. Health and welfare traffic
b. Hospitals
i. Status to EOC
ii. Equipment needed
c. CERT Teams
i. Damage assessments
ii. Damage reports
d. Commercial entities
i. Damage reports
ii. Available resources
iii. Financial impacts
e. EOC to County services
i. Lists of equipment
ii. Resources available
iii. Task lists
Responders will be directed to their local county frequency’s, capabilities determined, then dispatched via voice to various sites or frequencies to get recipients of message. Content of message should be in correct NTS packet format and include details of the amateur’s packet station. All messages will have “This is a test message” included in text. Sample message is included below. It will be up to the responder on how to get the message to it’s intended recipient. All messages will be responded to (voice or packet) and the responder will inform the sender that the message was delivered. Each packet message successfully passed will be graded according to the following point scale:
Packet message in correct format 10 points
Packet station has backup power 50 points
Packet station mobile 50 points
Message transmitted via 2 or more Nodes 50 points per node
Message transmitted via 2 or more Digi's 50 points per Digi
Activation message to county EOC 25 points
Activation message sent to State ECC 25 points
After Action Report sent to n7qqu@k7iqi 25 points
REQUIREMENTS FOR ALL *TRAINING/DRILL* TRAFFIC
1. Messages must be numbered
2. Precedence will be
TRAINING Emergency (TE)
TRAINING Priority (TP)
TRAINING Routine (TR).
The ECC generally does not handle Health and Welfare traffic.
3. Handling instructions are not used.
4. Station of origin.
5. Check is not required.
6. Place of origin will generally be COUNTY ECC or other official agencies.
7. Date in Month, Day form. NO YEAR! Example: APR 14.
8. Time filed recorded in the 24-hour system using LOCAL TIME. For example: 3:06 PM is given as 1506.
9. Address of person in ECC to whom the message is directed or the job function of such an individual.
10. ALL messages must include the following line:
*** THIS IS A TRAINING/DRILL MESSAGE ***.
11. The message must have a signature.
12. All packet traffic received should be acknowledged.
13. All messages will be in plain ASCII text.
Sample Message
MESSAGE: #001 Washington County
PRECEDENCE: TR
ORIGIN: kc7zbi@kb7ogd.or.us.noam
PLACE: Mobile, HWY 26
DATE: Jan 13
TIME: 22:35
TO: EC - Ben - N7OGM@K7IQI.OR.USA.NOAM
***** THIS IS A TRAINING MESSAGE - THERE IS NO EMERGENCY *****
Ben,
Stuck in traffic, you are on your own for this exercise Using kpc-3 with Pac-Term 98 on a laptop, battery powered Signed: Ed Clark KC7ZBI Washington county, HWY 26 mile marker 15
Editors Note: As always with any ARES exercise, questions can be answered by checking in to your local ARES net. Multnomah Co. ARES net happens every Wednesday night at 7PM on the 146.840- Repeater. The district 1 ARES net follows at 7:30 on the 147.320+ repeater. Our continued thanks to both PARC and ARRG for their continued support of local ARES activities.
Get involved in the club. Due to some increases in my work load during my regular job, and the lack of articles for the sPARC gap, this issue is late. A few of you know from calling that I’ve been at work lately up til 1AM, getting up at 6AM the next day to get my son ready for school, and get off to work. There are others in the club in the same boat, giving their time at work, family, and for the club. There is something else afoot that is not ready to be disclosed yet, but rest assured that a few members of the club have been burning the midnight oil toward a common goal. There is a trip planned this Sunday to perform a temporary service repair on the 6.84 repeater in order to get the power output back up for club activities as well as coordination for the upcoming packet SET. I would like to see articles from each of you this coming year, it would really help out. Many of the articles are about things I’m doing with kids which makes it seem like I’m monopolizing the issue for personal gains. Nothing could be farther from the truth. This publication is about the club, and the activities of all members. If you have an idea of something that would make a good article, jot it down and send it to me.
I’ve been getting some good articles about bunny hunts, about the upcoming Linux programs beginning next month (I pushed out a great article by Neal, N7RX until next month so that it would line up with the presentation planned for the March meeting). A few of you have stepped up to the plate and offered to give presentations as well as write accompanying articles – those have helped out tremendously, and we’re getting a lot of recognition in the local ham community as well as from prospective hams. I’m not asking for miracles, just a little help in filling up the pages with the kind of stuff you’d like to read.
I got some good feedback at the last meeting that I didn’t publish the roster of contacts for the club. My apologies for not doing that on a regular basis. I will start with the next issue, until then, I’ll publish my contact information.
If you have an article to publish, even if it’s not polished, send it along. I can’t promise that your article will be published as is (If I get a 4 page article on how to solder braid to a UHF connector, It’s probably going to be trimmed down a bit). Articles of particular interest are new modes of operation; club history; upcoming events; how-to’s; ham related events that you’ve attended, etc. That certainly is not a complete list. I’d like to do articles about some of you club members as well. We need to be a club, and not just a collection of folks all facing the same direction in an auditorium.
Renew your membership. This may be the last issue you receive until we know that you’re still interested in receiving it.
So, here’s my contact information:
Ed Burress
7592 SW Vlahos
Wilsonville, OR 97070
Email: kc7gfx@arrl.net
Phone: (503) 685-3200 work (503) 682-2513 home
If I’m busy or away from my desk, I may have to call you back later, but I’ll try to return your call ASAP.
