Great news! We have received a small grant and the City of Gresham is in the process of purchasing six laptops to increase our digital capabilities. We should receive these and get them set up in the next couple of weeks.
For the Spring SET, we will activate the Gresham EOC for two hours on Friday, April 22. Expect activation around 3:00 PM. This is a 24-hour SET, and with the Walk MS event the following day, we have decided to activate the served agencies on Friday.
We will participate in the April 22/23 SET. The team will set up and operate from Council Crest. It will be a good opportunity for the team to practice a variety of skills including setting up a digi-peater, a cross-band repeater, long distance VHF with directional beam antenna, as well as HF operations. We will have our plate full.
Please join me in welcoming our newest members, Mark KE7NKZ, Rich (no callsign yet), and Owana, supporting member.
Congratulations to Rolf KI4HOP, Steve W7SRH, Kent K7YXZ, Monte KG2RS, and Jeff N7TTQ who have earned their HF Operator certificates.
One of our 2016 goals is to expand our membership. If you know another ham, please encourage them to join us. If everyone brings one new member, we will be able to staff all our served agencies and field teams.
It has been a very busy month for the leadership team. Our PIO Steve W7SRH has arranged public service radio interviews with KKPZ and KINK; great fun and a wonderful way to spread the word about ARES and ham radio.
Planning for Walk MS and the Spring Statewide ARES SET (April 22 and 23) is in full swing. Both events being on the same weekend poses a challenge and an opportunity. The PBEM trailer will be the net control hub for Walk MS and the ARES trailer will handle the many needs for the SET. We are going to be operating a full 24 hours around the clock, from 13:00 Friday to 13:00 Saturday with constant HF voice contact with OEM in Salem. Some of the local voice and Winlink contacts will be Friday, with Winlink HF Pactor and more local contacts on Saturday. This will be the first operations test for the fully equipped ARES trailer. Our West Side Relay Team will be deployed both days to set up a crossband repeater and a digipeater from Council Crest.
We have a big turnout of volunteers for Walk MS, thanks to everyone who has signed up to help!
Planning has also started for the June 8 and 9 Cascadia Rising exercise. Multnomah County Emergency Management has invited us to join them in the planning process. We are hoping to start recruitment for this event at the beginning of May so stay tuned.
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.
A new year brings new opportunities to improve communication skills and have some fun along the way. We completed our January General Meeting with 74 in attendance, including some who were there to express interest in becoming a member of ARES.
Some of the areas the organization will focus on this year include building on our excellent General Meeting training experiences. In addition, we will soon be announcing new content and material in response to the year-end surveys you have completed.
Recruiting is a second area leadership will focus on during the year. Steve W7SRH is leading a small group and is currently assembling a tactical plan to achieve an additional 30 members this year. This may include a licensing class for those seeking to become a ham and an ARES member.
We currently have over 15 people who have completed the Net Control workshop, and they are getting scheduled through Marino KG7EMV to run their first MCARES Weekly Net.
Our February General Meeting focuses on ICS forms and logging (ICS 309, 213, and 214). Eli W7ELI and I will team teach this meeting.
Our March General Meeting focuses on Net Control and Net Protocol. Guest speaker Hal KC7ZZB will be our lead for this meeting. Hal is Net Manager for the D1 Net, assistant manager for the NTTN and has years of experience as net control for the Race for the Cure and other public service events as well as some actual disaster radio experience. This should be an entertaining and informative meeting.
Remember that resistance is not futile. It’s voltage divided by current.
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:
| Name/Callsign | Checkins |
|---|---|
| Deb KK7DEB | 51 |
| Eli W6ELI | 49 |
| Dylan W7KEF | 37 |
| John KF7ZWX | 37 |
| Michael AE7XP | 36 |
| Marino KG7EMV | 35 |
| Steve W7SRH | 35 |
| Lori W3LOR | 34 |
| Matthew AF7PV | 34 |
| Nate N9VCU | 34 |
| Rolf KI4HOP | 32 |
| Paul N7NTW | 31 |
| Helen KE7SCS | 29 |
| Adam KF7LJH | 28 |
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.