Monthly Archives: October 2020

Calling all VE’s and Teachers

Posted on by

Hello, the Western Mass section needs your help! As you know COVID has squashed most of the classes and testing sessions this year. I have been informed by Ken Burstall WB8PKK that the Masonic Hall in Gardner has a new air filtration system and is allowing us the use of their dining hall to host a Tech-in-a-day course and an open and walk in VE session. We need volunteer teacher’s and VE’s to assist in conducting the testing and teachings. There are also 25 Boafeng radio’s preprogrammed for those that have passed.

This will be in compliance with the guidelines of the Board of Health and testing materials will be sterilized using UV-C process and heat-sealed bags. Ken has provided the materials for sterilization and has provided the means to get this off the ground. 
Session dates are open and can be either a Saturday or Sunday in January or February. We need to know who can participate to do what and when in order to secure the date to advertise. Please contact Ken at backhoeken@yahoo.com. This invitation will also be open to our EMA neighbors as well.

Thank you, Ken, for your generous effort and donation. Please pass this along to anyone interested. And please let’s not let this opportunity pass by.

Thank you,
Ray KB1LRL

WMA ARES HF Emergency Net Signal Reports

Posted on by

Hello to all stations that checked into the WMA ARES HF Emergency Net on Sunday October 11.

You’ve probably noticed that I’ve requested your power levels to be reported also … this is to assist in studying some of the 75m ionospherics at play during our net relative to the time and your location. I’ve attached a table of your received signal strengths at my station here in Southwick MA for your information. Receive antenna is a multi band Off Center Fed Dipole (OCFD) at about 70 feet into a Yaesu FT-1000MP. Results are interesting especially at low and QRP power levels.

While I have not calibrated the meter at this point, I believe the readings vs power levels vs distance from the station will give us a better idea of what could be the case in a large scale emergency where 100 watts might be the maximum power a station could produce – especially if deployed. Near Vertical Incident Skywave (NVIS) signals are the defacto mode of communication for our nets due to the typical heights of our antennas. This is usually a good medium for reliable communications out to 300 miles or so. However, there has been information published that describes a ‘donut hole’ of about 100 miles that may pop up depending on the condition of the ionosphere with time…most likely the D and E Layer absorption growing as the sun heats things up.

Certainly other layers and factors affect our efforts and I’m trying to get a handle on all this by collecting reports and trying to relate things to ionosphere level  readings taken at the same time as our net from the nearby ionosonde site at Millstone Hill in MA. I will keep you advised of any findings as I study the voluminous data on ionograms and their translations on the web. I am pretty new to this and the data available is primarily at research science levels so if any of you are well – versed or have a potential contact that might be, I’d appreciate your inputs <grin>!

I’m going to try to collect and refine readings going forward and will make these available as I collect them … at a location to be determined – possibly posted here for the time being.

Thanks to all of you for your net participation and your willingness to serve your communities in disaster situations.

Vy 73,
Bob – K1YO
Section Emergency Coordinator – Western Massachusetts Section

Department of Defense Exercise With Amateur Radio Participation, October 2020

Posted on by

As written by Tom Kinahan N1CPE and posted on the NE Division website:

For almost the whole month of October, (now through October 26) the Department of Defense is conducting a series of exercises that will train the connection of MARS members to the Amateur Radio Service.

There are opportunities for hams to participate in this exercise.

1) Every day at noon local time, there will be a net on 60 meters channel 1 (5.3305 MHz USB) to have checkins from hams. The NCS will ask for your callsign, city and state. As the month moves on, there may be other unplanned requests.

2) Familiarize yourself with the METAR which is transmitted on VHF AM from all major and some less major airports as weather information for pilots. See if you can transcribe the weather information. They speak fast, and usually in mumbles. This is valuable information to the DoD in times of communication outage. Contact me for additional details.

3) There will be ICS-213 messages originating in MARS for certain ARRL and other local ham radio leaders refiled into the NTS system for delivery. NTS nets may carry these messages. Be ready to copy these messages and deliver them, by checking in to your local NTS net.

If you have any questions, please let me know!

 

[Tom Kinahan is the Army MARS Region 1 Executive Officer. He can be contacted at: tom.kinahan@verizon.net]

New Amateur Licensees September 2020

Posted on by

Congratulations to the latest new hams of Western Massachusetts:

Samuel A Bell, KC1NUK
470 Memorial Dr
Apt 351
Chicopee, MA 01020-5051

Michael P Siekiewicz, KC1NUL
556 Main St
Hampden, MA 01036-9679

Patrick J Lennon, KC1NXI
91 Pineridge Dr
Westfield, MA 01085-4544

David J Moriarty, KC1NSZ
76 Campechi St
Springfield, MA 01104-2921

Paul M Bigos, KC1NUJ
95 Mountain Dale Cir
691
Becket, MA 01223

Aaron Taylor, KC1NWC
41 Hill Province Rd
Williamstown, MA 01267-2030

David W Eckler, KC1NWI
10 Briarcliff Ln
Spencer, MA 01562-3111

ARES Potential Deployment Capabilities Survey

Posted on by

The ARES Western Massachusetts Section is in the process of updating information about its members. We are beginning a redesign of our Registration Form and accessibility to the data you have provided in the past.  Look for more information on our WMA ARES website as we progress through these tasks.

Initially I’d like to ask each of our current members to take a very quick and simple (10 questions) survey to give us an idea of who might be available for deployment in the event of an emergency.

Aaron, KF1G, has developed the survey input as part of his regular website. You can get to the form by going to https://www.kf1g.net/survey/

Please take a minute to respond so that we can have a current picture of our resources, capabilities, and desired level (if any) of deployment should the need arise.
Thanks in advance for helping us provide our communities needed communications assistance.

Very Best Regards,
Bob – K1YO
Section Emergency Coordinator – Western MA ARES

HamXposition / New England ARES Academy Schedule

Posted on by

From ema.arrl.org:

The first-ever New England Division ARES Academy, originally scheduled for the Division Convention in November, will instead be held over a period of several weeks in October via Zoom. There are five Basic Track classes for those just getting started, and more advanced classes and workshops for those who already have the basics. One-hour classes will be held on weeknights from 7:30 to 8:30, and two-hour workshop sessions will be held Saturday mornings from 9:00 to 11:00.

A big benefit of the on-line schedule is the opportunity to take every single class and workshop instead of having to pick and choose. Weeknight class participants will be able to ask questions and interact with the instructor via chat. The two-hour Saturday workshops are designed to be even more interactive. Academy Instructors are all recognized experts in their subject area.

The NE-ARES Academy is an outgrowth of the successful NH-ARES Academy program that ran at the NH State Fire Academy for eight years. The program’s goal is to offer both basic and advanced skills training based in ARRL ARES training standards.

We plan to continue this program at the Convention once the pandemic is over, in hopes that building a standardized base of training across New England will enhance our ability to provide better local emergency communications, and an effective ARESMAT (ARES Mutual Assistance Team) response across the region, and beyond.

NE-ARES-Academy-Schedule

Academy coordinator Dave Colter, WA1ZCN, was the original editor and principal author of ARRL’s Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Course series in the early 2000s, and creator of the original NH-ARES Academy. He is currently ASEC-Training for NH-ARES.

Social Media Auto Publish Powered By : XYZScripts.com