DAREN of WV News December 13, 2009 (.909)
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.
There will be a Region 5 Hospital Exercise this coming Thursday, December 17th. Region 5 consists of the counties of Calhoun, Jackson, Pleasants, Ritchie, Roane, Tyler, Wirt, and Wood. The hospitals who are supposed to be participating in the exercise are: Calhoun General, Camden Clark Memorial, Health South, Jackson General, Roane General, Sistersville General, and St Joseph's. The event will be an exercise of the hospital's Emergency Operations Plans, Centers, and Command Officials. The exercise will start at about 9:00 am and consist of a Winter Ice Storm. The officials will be required to resolve problems that will be communicated to them from a centralized, simulated, call center, or SIMCELL. The call center will be located at the Mid Ohio Valley Health Department in Parkersburg. During the first part of the exercise, the call center will use landline and cellular telephones to make contacts with the hospitals. During the second part of the exercise, communications will be handled by radio. Amateur Radio operators in Region 5 have been asked to provide the radio communications. Radio communications can be by whatever mode is available. The primary Voice Repeater will be the Wood County 147.255 MHz repeater, with a CTCSS tone of 131.8 Hz. If hospital radio communications cannot be handled on the Two Meter voice repeater, other solutions will be needed. The SIMCELL will have two other radio communications systems available. The SIMCELL DAREN Packet Radio system will be in operation at the beginning of the exercise and through the end of the exercise. Now would be the time to test your abilities to use Packet Radio. The Packet Radio Chatroom NODE of "CHATRM" will be used. To check into the chatroom, just connect to CHATRM from any NODE that can connect to the Ritchie County DAREN NODE of RITCWV, since they are both located at the same tower site, and share the same radio and antenna. After you connect to CHATRM, just type a "T" or "TALK", and you will enter the chatroom with those who are already there. The other radio communications system will be the Joint Emergency Network or JEMNET, which most of the hospitals already have in operation. The JEMNET system is an 800 MHz trucking system that gets tested every Friday morning at 9:00 am during a JEMNET call-up, which I'm usually the Net Control Station. The only hospital that doesn't have a JEMNET Radio at the present time is Jackson General. I was told that a JEMNET Radio is to be installed on Wednesday before the exercise. As emergency communicators any communications capability should be used during this, or any other exercise, or actual emergency.
The ARES group in Wood County provided the Line-up and Communications for the Parkersburg Christmas Parade yesterday. The parade attendance was down a little from previous years, but it was still a good parade and good exercise for the Amateur Radio operators who participated. The Parade Officials were very satisfied with the communications.
There were 65 check-ins to this week's State Wide DAREN Net. Gene Roy, N8ER, who's been participating in the net since May 1, 1993, has completed 850 check- ins, and will be receiving his certificate. Tricia Magyarosi, KC8VLI, needs only one more check-in to make 300. There was one new participant to the net this week, and that was William Hole, AC8FD. from Hambleton, WV. I want to welcome William to the DAREN system, and hope that he uses the system and participates in the State Wide DAREN Net as often as possible.