DAREN of WV News November 15, 2009 (.905)
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.
I think I've had the biggest April fool’s joke ever pulled on me. In the April 4th's DAREN News I wrote about the Wood County NODE/PBBS going brain dead, and was off the air. I had to give it a couple of hard resets to get back in operation. It seemed to work good for about two weeks, and then some time before April 19th the station went off the air again. I tried several times to get the station in operation remotely, with no success. I didn't have time to go to the tower site, so I set up another station here at the house using the WOODWV/PKBGWV aliases. At least there would be a station on the air with a NODE and a PBBS. The new station has been operating fine since then. This past week I noticed a couple of things that just didn't look right. There was traffic posted on the PBBS, that I know should have been deleted, but was still there. Then I noticed that when someone was connected to the PKBGWV PBBS, there were some reject commands codes that you only see when there are two stations on the same frequency, using the same alias or callsign. I started to doing some testing, and found that the original WOODWV/PKBGWV had came back on the air, and had been there for quite some time. Most of the DAREN News and State Wide DAREN Net Announcements dating back in April were on the original PBBS. They had been removed from the temporary one here at the house, but were still on the original PBBS. For the last six or seven months there has been two NODE/PBBSs with ALIAS of WOODWV/PKBGWV. There were messages that had been deleted on one PBBS that were still on the other one. It was quite confusing trying to figure out what was happening. This may have been the reason that some of the operators said they were having trouble getting in the State Wide DAREN Net on Saturdays and the DEC3 Net on Sundays. I think everything is back to normal now, and I don't need to make a trip to the tower site to replace the original TNC. I like the original PBBS TNC of PKBGWV. It is a Kantronics version 9.0, and allows five stations to be connected to the PBBS at same time. Packet Radio is very strange and can make you pull your hair out, or at least make it go grey.
There were 59 check-ins this week's State Wide DAREN Net. Brad Caribine, KC8TYU, needs only one more check-in to make 300. I want to welcome Francis (Mouse) Mauser, WA8SDA, back to the State Wide DAREN Net. Mouse has been missing from the State Wide Net since February 10, 2001. He has been checking into the Local/District 3 ARES Net about every Sunday for quite some time, but he just started back on the State Wide Net. I hope he keeps it up. I had a couple of computer problems on Saturday, and some check-ins may not have been logged. If you checked into the State Wide DAREN Net on Saturday between 11:30 am and 5:00 pm, and your callsign isn't on this week's Net Announcement, let me know. I may have missed your check-in.