Multnomah County ARES

Please join me in welcoming our ten new members, Dez K7DEZ, Steven KG7VAS, Pat KA6PAT, Ian K6IBX, Pavel KG7LZB, Dan KD7OOB, Nick KG7ZEA, Joe WA7FWC, Dennis KG7VXJ, and Eugene KG7LYQ. Please reach out and greet them at the February meeting.

One of our 2016 goals is to expand our membership. If you know another ham, please encourage them to join us. Tell them how awesome we are and all the fun we are going to have this year. We are calling this the “Each One Reach One” campaign.

Another way we can increase our operational capacity is to expand our supporting member numbers with those who are interested but do not have their license yet. They can join now and be our loggers. This is also for those who do not ever want to get on the air but do want to support our cause. We will do a logging training just for these folks, so bring in your friends and relatives.

DO NOT LET YOUR ACTIVE MEMBERSHIP LAPSE! There are some members who are perilously close to losing their active status and some who already have. If you want to reactivate, let us know and make it your new year’s resolution to stay active. To maintain or reactivate your active status and stay on a team, you need to do six activities per year. This can be any combination of attending general meetings, participating in our drills and SETs, participating in any public service event as a radio operator, or being net control for a session of our weekly MCARES net. Remember, it is your responsibility to let us know if you participate in a public service event. Reactivating may be as simple as letting us know which events you participated in last year. If you are not sure what your status is, ask your team leader or email me at dprovo [at] yahoo [dot] com.

The Red Cross station has amateur equipment for voice and digital on HF, VHF, and UHF, plus commercial voice equipment for HF, MF (47MHz), and UHF (463MHz). The Portland headquarters is responsible for all Oregon counties (except for Malheur county) and six counties in Ssouthwest Washington. We could get called upon to provide communication for disasters in any of those counties. The team is responsible for communication between headquarters and the various mobile feeding trucks and any shelters using amateur or commercial radios as appropriate.

Chris Voss, Emergency Manager, and Alice Busch, Operations Chief, attended our January general meeting and were impressed with our attendance of 74, a new record. They have expressed a willingness to procure for us six field digital go-kits and a drone! 2016 looks more and more exciting as we expand our knowledge and capabilities.

We are working on plans to issue county ID cards for all our active members. More details coming soon.

The team – Dylan W7KEF, Bob N6ZKL, and Steve W7SRH – has held several email discussions during January and February to review team organization and do an equipment and skills inventory. The team will set up and operate a resource net for the upcoming February 16 exercise being conducted in conjunction with Multnomah County Emergency Management.

Thank you everybody for participating in our Weekly MCARES Wednesday Net. The 2015 numbers are in and we got just shy of one thousand checkins to the Net! The tallied total for 2015 is 972 checkins; an average of 18 per week.

Here are the most dedicated MCARES net participants of 2015:

Thank you to all who participated and those who took their turns at Net Control!

We are looking forward to training a new class of operators and getting them certified as Net Control Operators. If you have any questions about this certification please inquire with our new training manager, Steve Konrad AF7DD.

We have heard your feedback and in 2016 we will shake up things a bit and try to make this Wednesday Net even more informative and interesting for you. While the initial part of the Net will retain the familiar preamble and check-in sections, in the latter part of the Net we will experiment with different formats and bring original content. This may include notable special guests, flash talks (5 minutes max) on subjects of interest and updates from the ECs or other EmComm group representatives. Some ideas are in the works. We cannot do it without your input and feedback! Let us know what you think by sending us email at leadership [at] multnomahares [dot] org.

On Thursday January 21, I along with three other leadership team members, Deb KK7DEB, Adam KF7LJH, and Steve AF7DD, made a presentation at the monthly Hoodview Amateur Radio Club (HARC) meeting. Our focus was on the MCARES mission as well as providing an update on our comms trailer project. HARC made a donation to the trailer fund raising drive. The following evening, January 22, I gave a comms trailer update to the Portland Amateur Radio Club (PARC). PARC is a major sponsor of the trailer project.

On Sunday, February 8, I attended a Western Oregon Radio Club (WORC) D-Star workshop where I made several contacts and did some networking with WORC and OTVARC members. On February 9, I gave a brief recruitment presentation to the Multnomah Neighborhood Association meeting.

On Sunday January 25, members of the leadership team met to discuss and develop a new member recruitment strategy. On Monday February 8, Deb, Eli W7ELI, Steve and I met to continue the discussion on recruitment and new member strategy. I have made contact with six VEs to discuss their assistance in disseminating MCARES recruitment materials to hams who just passed their technician test or upgraded their license. Also, during this same time frame I have made several MCARES recruitment QSTs on the Heart Net, NET Net and the ARES D1 Net. Follow-up letters were sent to eight prospective members following the January general membership meeting.

In case you haven’t heard, Gresham ECC was issued our station callsign, which is WG7EOC.

We will be having an HF operator certification session at the Gresham ECC on Saturday, March 12, from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM. This is open to all ARRO certified MCARES members. To attend this session, contact Robert WX5TEX at RGAnglin [at] gmail [dot] com.

We are looking to staff several locations in the east half of Multnomah County, including several Gresham Fire stations as well as Troutdale and Fairview. If you or someone you know is interested in working on a team on the east side, contact Robert.

The Rover Team looks forward to participating in all the MCARES SETs and events that are planned for 2016. Many of us are also planning to join in on some of the exercises and training organized by the Portland Bureau of Emergency Management (PBEM) Neighborhood Emergency Team (NET) and Basic Emergency Earthquake Communication Node (BEECN) programs.

At 2:00 PM on Saturday, February 27, there will be an exercise of the BEECN system, and Rovers – and non-Rovers – are serving as net controls, fire station amateur radio operators (AROs), BEECN cache radio operators, and Roamers. Roamers are trouble-shooters who typically ride with a Portland Fire & Rescue staff person among the stations and BEECN sites, assisting with radio issues.

Several Rovers are also helping the NET program as trainers to begin the new NET ARO standards and certification program. Based largely on the MCARES ARRO certification program, the new standards will require AROs to demonstrate proficiency in a number of areas of operations. In addition to most of the MCARES ARRO Task List items, NET ARO candidates must demonstrate proficiency with fire station VHF and UHF (BEECN) radio go-kits, explain the ICS205 form, pass the FEMA IS 800 and IS 802 courses, and – in lieu of formal message handling – demonstrate competence with an abbreviated form called tactical message handling.

The Rover Team currently has 11 members. The Team members do not have a MCARES served agency but are instead committed to some other activity or agency in the event of a disaster. All of the members currently are NET members and have their respective NETs as their obligation in an emergency.