DAREN of WV News April 4, 2021(F00)
(304) 679-3470 wa8llm@yahoo.com
Wood County Emergency Communications, 319 Communications Dr, Waverly, WV 26184
www.wc8ec.com or 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 www.wc8ec.com and www.wc8ec.org websites.
I hope everyone had a Happy Easter. It was a great day, and it didn't rain. I've always been told that if it rains on Easter Sunday, that it will rain on the next seven Sundays. If that's the case, we should have a nice spring season. The Wood County Amateurs will be providing the safety communications for the Challenge at Mountwood Mountain Bike race which will be held next Sunday. The bike race wasn't held last year, and we have lost some of our usual helpers. I hope we can get enough help so the race officials will keep on asking for our assistant.
Plans are to check out a tower site that we haven't had access to for a few years. The tower is a cell telephone tower located at water tanks in Williamstown. There used to be DAREN NODE/PBBS at the site. Since the site is on a high hill that looks down on the Ohio River, and just across the river from Washington County, and covers a lot of Marietta, Ohio, it was named WASHOH/MRTAOH. The site also housed a Remote Receiver for the Wood County Emergency Communications voice repeater on 147.255 MHz. For some reason the cabinet that housed all the equipment lost it's power, the back-up batteries died, and we weren't able to contact the tower owner to find out what happened to it. Plans are to make a trip up to the tower site this coming Wednesday, check all of the antennas, and install another Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network (AREDN) HSMM (High Speed MultiMedia) 2.4 GHz node. If we can't get power back in the cabinet, plans are to place solar panels on the cell company building to charge, and power all the Amateur equipment that we plan on putting in the cabinet.
Butch Sayers, WV8BS, is looking for a spare Kantronics KPC-3 Plus TNC, to have for his Mineral County NODE/PBBS of MINEWV/KEYSWV. The TNC that he is using on the MINEWV/KEYSWV station is still operational, but it just needs to reset, and maybe re-programmed. Butch just wants to have another TNC, in case something happens to the main one.
There were 35 check-ins to the State Wide DAREN Net this week. Terry Mills, KC8TUE, needs only one more check-in to make 900.