DAREN of WV News June 20, 2021(F11)
(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.
Last week I reported the Ritchie County NODE/PBBS of RITCWV/HRVLWV, and the Wood County Emergency Communications 147.255 MHz voice repeater, which are at the same tower site were down. We figured the problem might have been a commercial power outage due to a storm that went though the area last week. Since the systems didn't come back up by Wednesday, Judy Peterson, N8UFQ, and I made a trip to the tower site. We found the commercial power was on, but the two systems were down. We found the power supply was dead and the voltage on the back-up batteries was too low to power the systems. The only thing I had with me was a car battery charger, so we put it on the batteries and the systems came back up. Yesterday, Joe Thomas, N8MEV, Alan Currance, N8POB, and I made another trip to the tower site and replaced the battery charger with a new power supply. While at the site we looked it over and decided we need to do some grass, brush, and tree cleaning. We will do that in the near future.
This week will be a busy one. Field Day is next Saturday and Sunday, and we need to get things ready. The Wood County Emergency Communications group will hold Field Day at the farm owned by Anna Hendershot, KC8JWW. The group will be putting up a 24 foot by 40 canopy for the operators to set up at least five stations. It will be a week long project since there will be several batteries and a solar panel system installed. This past week Sammy Mercer, N8SVX, and I installed a couple wind generators on the 95 foot tower that is at the Field Day site. We can't use the tower for Field Day, but we hope to tie the wind generators, along with the solar panels, into the battery system. We may even try to operate all of the Field Day transceivers the whole 24 hour just from wind and solar. When it's completed, the tower site will be a back-up site for all of the local voice repeaters, back-up Packet Radio systems, and the Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network (AREDN) HSMM (High Speed MultiMedia) 2.4 GHz system, since the whole site will only have wind and solar power. I hope everyone has a fun and safe Field Day next week.
There were 38 check-ins to the State Wide DAREN Net this week. Krista Mills, KC8VLJ, who has been participating in the net since December 28, 2002, has completed 900 check-ins, and will be receiving her certificate. Julie Hartley, KB8SYE, needs only one more check-in to make 400. There was a new call sign on the net this week, and that was KC8TAM. The call belongs to Terry Meadows, who use to hold the call of N8HXV, and lives in Walker, WV.