DAREN of WV News October 14, 2012(.A58)
WA8LLM (304) 679-3470 wa8llm@yahoo.com
WOOD COUNTY EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS
P.O. BOX 3328, PARKERSBURG, WV 26103
http://www.wc8ec.org
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.org website.
This past week I was in a meeting with the regional hospitals. They are planning to hold a emergency drill with all of the hospitals in the region participating. The officials of the drill want to be able to have some kind of radio communications between each of the hospitals. The hospitals and the counties in the region are: Mini Hamilton in Calhoun County, Roane General in Roane County, Jackson General in Jackson County, Sistersville General in Tyler County, and Camden Clark and St. Joseph in Wood County. They would like to use their commercial 800 MHz radio system called JEMNet. The only problem with the JEMNet system is that some of their radios are not working. Since the hospitals are so far apart, no one 2 Meter voice repeater can be used to tie the hospitals together. I would like to use Packet Radio to have the needed communications. There are a few problems that need to be worked out, but I think we can make it work. The exercise is scheduled for Thursday, December 6th from 8:00am to 3:00pm. I would like to get two Amateur Radio operators at each of the hospitals to provide the needed communications. The DAREN chatroom of CHATRM which is located on the Wood County/Ritchie County line, is back in operation. The station went off the air a few days after the wind storm of June 29th. With the commercial power off, the batteries went dead in about five days, taking the Ritchie County DAREN NODE/PBBS of RITCWV/HRVLWV, and the CHATRM station off the air. When I made a trip to the tower site, I was able to repair the DAREN station, but didn't have enough time to work on the chatroom. This week I found out the chatroom station was back in operation with no help from me. For the hospital exercise I would like to use the CHATRM station for the inter hospital communications. In the next few weeks I will be making sure that Calhoun County and Tyler County have DAREN NODEs that can access the chatroom station. Four out the six hospitals can already access the DAREN system and the chatroom. What I need now is to get the Amateur Radio operators to man and operate Packet Radio stations at the hospitals. If you would like to participate in the exercise on December 6th, let me know so that we can get the Packet Radio stations set up, and get practice using the chatroom system.
There were 47 check-ins to the State Wide DAREN Net this week. Krista Mills, KC8VLJ, needs only one more check-in to make 450.