DAREN of WV News October 11, 2009 (.900)
Kenneth Harris WA8LLM (304) 679-3470 wa8llm@yahoo.com
WOOD COUNTY EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS
P.O. BOX 3328, PARKERSBURG, WV 26103
http://www.wc8ec.com
DAREN News, are articles and information about the Digital Amateur Radio "Emergency" Network of WV, which operates on 145.69 MHz. Anyone having any information about DAREN, or Amateur Radio in general, and would like to share it with others, may send it to WA8LLM @ PKBGWV on 145.69 MHz, or to my E-Mail: wa8llm@yahoo.com. A State Wide DAREN NET is operated every Saturday from 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm, and lately, before and after those hours. The DAREN Net Announcement, showing the MAIN NCS, ALTERNATE NCS, NODEs accessible to both, and the previous week's check-ins, are posted by Thursday on most of the Main county DAREN PBBS'. The DAREN News can also be found on the wc8ec.com website.
Not much news this week. Things are starting to slow down again as the cold weather is arriving.
I do want to thank all of the Amateur Radio operators who traveled to Parkersburg to attend, what we hope will become, an annual Hamfest. From counting the door entree tickets it looks like we had about 125 people show up, but it looked like a lot more than that. We finalized our fund raising event we called Radio-A-Day Give Away at the Hamfest. The fund raiser didn't do any good. We pretty much broke even on it. The money we made just covered the cost of the expenses to put it together, pay for the radios that were given away, and their shipping. We weren't able to sell all of the tickets, just enough to cover the cost of everything. I don't think we will try that again. We made a mistake of making it only Amateur Radios, we thought it would work.
I haven't heard anything about any of the DAREN stations having any problems or any new ones coming on the air. With the changing of the weather I know the paths will start changing. In the fall and winter the paths seem to be a lot better, I guess because the leaves are off the trees and the signals don't get attenuated as much. Now that most of our group's major activities are over, I will be able to get the Wood County NODE/PBBS of WOODWV/PKBGWV, back in good working order at its regular tower site. The TNC on the original NODE/PBBS keeps going brain dead, so it needs to be changed out. I liked the original TNC since I was able to program it to allow for 5 stations to connect to the PBBS at the same time. If I have another TNC with Version 9.0 software, I think I will try it again. Maybe sometime this week I'll make a trip to the hilltop and get it corrected.
There were 59 check-ins to this week's State Wide DAREN Net. Terry Mills, KC8TUE, who's been participating in the net since October 19, 2002, has completed 300 check-ins. Terry will be receiving his certificate. Joe Peterson, N8DSN, needs only one check-in to make 750. Bud McDowell, W8OO, needs only one more check-in to make 550.