Join me in welcoming our newest members. Kim K7IMA will join the Delta Team and Dave KI7WXK has joined the Charlie team. This brings our active member count to 108. I recently saw the official State ARES roster and Multnomah County ARES continues to have the largest membership in the state!
Thanks to all our members for a great turnout for the Spring Statewide ARES SET! We are working on correcting the technical issues we had for the SET but overall we did receive a good number of Damage Assessment forms via Winlink and the portable digipeater really helped with the process. Ralph AF7FE and the Alpha team had their hands full at the County EOC. They were able to complete all the state required tasks. Way to Go Alpha Team! We had an amazing 48 simplex net checkins on Friday and 36 operators on Saturday.
The Walk MS event was held at the Oregon Zoo this year and was quite a change from the past. Brian KE7QPV did an amazing job organizing and adjusting to the new needs of the event organizers. There were over 2000 walkers this year and our 23 ARES operators were flawless in keeping the flow of communications on track and providing eyes and ears for safety for the walkers. The Walk MS organizers expressed a deep appreciation for the service that we provided.
The group photo above was taken after some of our “Shadow” operators were dispatched so Carrie, Rochelle, and Matthew are not in the photo. Also missing is sweep operator Robert, and net control Neil. Adam, our Communications Leader, was the photographer. Great job everyone!
Now we look forward to SeaPac on May 31 and June 1 where the MCARES trailer will be on display. Please let leadership know if you would like to sign up for a shift at the outreach table next to the trailer.
June 22 and 23 is Field Day at Willamette Park. We hope you will be visiting and operating with us this summer. More details will be coming soon along with an opportunity to sign up to work a station or bring a dish to the Saturday pot luck.
At our April 11 leadership meeting we decided to make some changes to the weekly Wednesday night net. Checkins will be by team instead of by call sign suffix. This encourages members to learn to recognize their team members. Also checkins will follow training gems, traffic, and announcements so please try to tune in on time at 7:00 PM. Our net manager, Rachel KI7NMB, will update the net scripts and announce when these changes will go into effect.
The online FEMA class IS-800 is now a federal requirement. We have gone through our records and almost half of our active members have sent in their completion certificate. We will be sending a separate email with a list of call signs of the certificates we do have. If your call sign is not on the list, please take the class and send in your certificate to eliza [dot] pride [at] gmail [dot] com. We know this is not a fun task, so we are giving you until October 1, 2019 to get it done. We will send periodic reminders for the procrastinators among us.
Join me in welcoming our newest member, Todd K7EMI. Todd is a Legacy Good Sam Hospital responder and will be placed on our Supporting Members list.
Grounds and Grounding
There has been a lot of activity in the station building front in MCARES over the past few months. As I receive stories and reports I am greatly encouraged by everyone’s willingness to jump in and build a better radio station. One of the main topics of concern folks have when installing a new radio station is proper grounding. There is considerable confusion and strong feelings over this topic. I cannot hope to clarify the technical aspects of station bonding and grounding in a newsletter setting, but I do want to make sure that everyone is looking in the right places and asking the right questions when they consider their station grounds.
There has been a lot of activity in the station building front in MCARES over the past few months. As I receive stories and reports I am greatly encouraged by everyone’s willingness to jump in and build a better radio station. One of the main topics of concern folks have when installing a new radio station is proper grounding. There is considerable confusion and strong feelings over this topic. I cannot hope to clarify the technical aspects of station bonding and grounding in a newsletter setting, but I do want to make sure that everyone is looking in the right places and asking the right questions when they consider their station grounds.
First off, the best way to get the right information is to research the situation oneself from the appropriate resources! MCARES is adamant that the ARRL technical publications are the best place to find information that has been vetted by competent engineers and will lead to safe and effective station construction. The two best publications are Grounding and Bonding for Radio Amateur and The ARRL Handbook. Additionally, The ARRL Antenna Book for Radio Communications has very good in-depth information regarding RF grounds and their effects on radiated signal.
When one begins their shack, consider the four types of grounding/bonding that are part of proper station design. These are:
- Electrical Safety Bonding
- The ground that provides the path for overcurrent protection and provides chassis shock protection.
- This is the third prong / green wire in your house distribution
- RF Ground
- It is important to keep the shack equipment at the same reference potential to avoid current flows or potential differences that can affect the operation of modern equipment.
- Chassis Ground
- These are the connections we think of for grounding inside the shack, the individual chassis connections to a great, fat ground bar that makes its way to a good earth ground.
- Bonding of equipment to prevent RF flow between them can be difficult, so make sure your ground strap setup is as clean and short as possible.
- Lightning Dissipation
- The design of these systems can be complicated; make sure to review your desired results before implementing lightning protection. Again, review the appropriate technical references when you go to set up your operating station, and stay away from QRZ and eHam forums; you’ll find too much time there will make you want to give up on grounding altogether.
Yay! I think spring is finally happening. It has been a very interesting winter and I am looking forward to a little warmth and sunshine.
The last of this winter’s exercises from home is happening on March 30. We hope you all have a chance to participate in the SSTV drill. We start our outdoor activities on April 26 and 27 with the Spring Statewide ARES SET.
Walk MS will be May 11 and this year the event will be happening at the Oregon Zoo. Watch for an email from Brian KE7QPV for sign up details.
We have planned this year to keep everyone busy with many opportunities to keep their operating skills sharp and several Saturday workshops. The recent J-pole build workshop was well attended. 15 members and one non-member went home with new antennas. Our sincere thanks to John KI7LYP for making these workshops possible.
The ARES trailer has been sitting idle this winter but much has been happening on the inside. A new radio rack has been installed on the right side of the desk toward the front of the trailer. There are seven new radios: three commercial VHF, one commercial UHF, one 1.25 meters, one 800 MHz and one Civil Air Patrol VHF. The addition of these radios greatly expands our communication capabilities.
I was 14 when I first took the cover off an AM radio and fell in love with electronics. All those glowing vacuum tubes and “variable condenser” plates, it was fascinating. I told my father and a friend of his (a radio technician at Pan American Airways) gave me his old 1940’s correspondence course in electronics. It’s wasn’t easy, but I finally learned something about what made that magic work. Finally, in 1960, our pharmacist and ham operator Phil Bloom, gave me the novice exam and I became KN5BNT. He called it, K-N-5-Better-Not-Tarry.
But what is a 15-year-old going to do with Morse code in remote, rural Brownsville, Texas? So, I put it on hold and pursued more social interests, like cameras and girls.
Fifty years later I finally got back to it and took the Technician exam. This time, I could actually talk to people and it had a use. The Multnomah County Amateur Radio Emergency Service and Portland NET gave it some people and a purpose.
Expecting to forget everything on the Technician test, I went ahead and took the General exam. Then knowing that I’d forget all that, I took the Extra test. I still don’t know much about radio technology, but now I have some real people to help me with it.
I am now K7INQ, which I phonetically pronounce K-7-I’m-Not-Quiet. I’m too talkative to be a natural at emergency communications, but I still love people and cameras. We all bring different talents to the table; so maybe I can be useful at promoting and teaching others about ham radio and emergency preparedness.
We are off to a great start to the new year with 71 folks attending the January meeting and 52 members joining in on the February 9 Winlink exercise. We also added two new members in January. A warm welcome to Greg KJ7CPK who joins the Echo team and Robert KI7VQR who joins the Bravo team.
The sign in sheet at our monthly meetings has become quite a time consuming task so we are starting a new procedure beginning at our February monthly meeting. There will be sign in sheets on the table to the left as you enter the meeting room. The sheets will list by team and all you need to do is find your team and name and initial that you are there. Pretty easy on your part but you must remember to check in. Our smiling greeter Ann KF7RBV will be there to remind you for the first few months. There will be a sheet for guests and others not assigned to a team so if you bring a friend direct them toward that sheet. We hope this change will make things easier and less distracting for our members. It will also make our bookkeeping easier.
Our February meeting will feature our EC, Nathan NA7EE, with a Multnomah County ARES overview. Our special guest, David Kidd KA7OZO, SEC and SM, will also talk to us about the State ARES and National ARRL organizations. There should be plenty of time to ask questions. We look forward to seeing you on February 28!