On Saturday, March 16, 2019, PWCARES had our regular training.
The slides for training are available.
As we discussed, with regards to training, we will continue along the current training schedule and not worry too much about the new League’s training requirements for now. The on-line course is all full for this year’s offered courses as of now.
If you have Winlink questions, please do not hesitate to reach out.
The ARRL created a new portal for coordinating and consolidating events and activities across the ARES activity space. This is called ARES Connect. Prince William County ARES is registered as Prince William 153VA – Volunteers under the Virginia drop down. It is a bit convoluted to use at the moment but hopefully things will clear up.
What this means to you is we have another area to register (sorry) and if you would click “attend” for our various events as you participate in them, this helps the League track volunteer participation throughout the year.
For the EC, this is double entry work (triple entry work if you include the tracking site for the Marine Corps Marathon Program Office work we do).
I have posted all of our upcoming events for 2019, they are the same as you will find on the front calendar of our main site.
If you have any questions, send them my way and I will do what I can to get them answered.
Slides from the training are available.
On Saturday, January 19, 2019, PWCARES had their first training of 2019. Some of the topics we covered included:
There are a number of events coming up this year. First for the Marine Corps Program Office.
Other fun events:
Routine events:
There are new required training events, posted on the Training Page. For the classroom courses, we will be working with the County to get them arranged, either as a part of our regular training or a couple of evening trainings. Please send your certifications to the EC when you have completed the courses. If you have prior versions, you do not have to retake the course.
There have been some minor changes in the ICS 213 form and the ICS 214 forms. Please make sure you have the current forms in your kits. There are also new forms you need to know about, including the Prince William County Resource Form (see the Quick Reference Guide) and the Volunteer Request Form. Please familiarize yourself with these forms. One minor change from past years is that the paper process will be used over WebEOC, which will have a limited role going forward. If you are familiar with WebEOC, you can forget all that material.
The ICS forms tab has now been updated with the relevant forms you should have in your kits.
A hearty thank you to the cadre for all the help in 2018 and I look forward to a great 2019.
Christmas is behind us, and New Year’s Day is right around the corner, but in the meantime, you probably have a few hours to kill. How about doing some training?
New training requirements are coming. The 2019 training calendar is already posted, and along with the usual requirement of IS-700, IS-800, IS-100, and IS-200, there are new training classes that we all have to take to stay current with the county. For the on-line classes, the new ones include:
Both of these courses are new for us and we are required to take them as soon as possible. There are also some new classroom courses that will be sprinkled into the training as we go, but some of you may already have them. They include:
There are also some new optional course that you can take if you have some spare time.
Remember, if you already have one of these courses, you do not currently have to retake them. So if you have IS-700a, (the current version is 700b), you are covered.
As always, please send the Emergency Coordinator a copy of your certificate for those classes that you passed.
See you at the January Training! (Saturday, January 19, 2019) at the EOC.
Welcome to September. Fall is here (or at least just around the corner). Hurricane season is well underway. And it is time to check our supplies for winter.
I had an interesting conversation with some of my friends about being prepared. One topic that we kept coming back to was the lack of preparedness we were all suffering from. The great ramp up, concerning visibility, that came from September 11, 2001, has virtually disappeared here on the Eastern Seaboard. Even those who as recently as 2012 (Sandy) have just fallen out of the habit of being prepared. And there are many reasons.
Even my own state of supplies is out of date and in need of replacement in many cases.
Following September 11, many people spent a lot of money on emergency supplies, spent time on preparing plans, and spent time getting ready. The problem is that it is not a one-time thing. If you do not practice, or worse, do not have a need to practice, then your preparations get stale quickly. You end up shrugging your shoulders. I’m as ready as I can be. And then you forget. Or wonder what all the hype was about.
If you do not live in a storm zone, it is all too easy to get lulled into a sense of security. Until the next unimaginable thing happens. I get it. I talk about preparedness almost every day to people, and I am woefully unprepared myself.
What can you do? There are many things. You can join your local CERT team. There they will help keep the idea in the front of your mind to exercise you plan. If you are part of ARES, you should be reviewing your plan regularly. Make it part of your monthly check-up, along with your finances. Get a Red Cross CPR certification. They expire every year, and that will force you to reevaluate your situation. At the very least, take a look at your last plan, evaluate where it was when you finished it and updated it. Phone numbers, medicines, contacts, documents, then go through your go-kits and refresh all the things that need refreshing. Remember, clothes shrink in bags stored in cupboards.
There are many good ideas for preparing for an emergency on the ARES website. Take a moment and see how prepared you are.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. That is the loose translation of a classic French saying about the nature of change. And like most changes, we are often not aware of them unless someone says something. Take government forms. They are constantly changing and evolving, but unless you need them, or use them regularly, or are part of the committee that is responsible for updating them, you hardly ever notice.
Today, I noticed.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is responsible for maintaining the National Incident Management Forms. Most of the forms post-September 11 came out of the fire service or the Hazmat response teams associated with the Coast Guard. They worked, but they were never optimal as far as most people were concerned. FEMA promised new forms. Most of us just carried on.
In 2015, they updated the NIMS ICS Forms. All members of PWCARES should download the new Forms book (also available on our ICS page) and use those forms instead of any prior forms.
Please take a moment to update your go-kits.
Back in 2014, I wrote an article about my attempts to compile FLDIGI on a Raspberry Pi. That attempt was done on a Series 2 Raspberry Pi, with 512 Mbytes of RAM and an older ARM chip. Like everything else, time marches on, and I thought it might be time to see if a newer Raspberry Pi might perform better. The Pi I am using now is a Type3 B with WiFi and 1 Gbyte of RAM and a much faster ARM chip. Let’s see what happens!
First, if you installed a NOOB or Lite version of the software, you will need to install some additional software. If you installed the full version, you may have to add some additional software, we will cover that as we go along.
First, let’s make sure we have the most recent software:
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
There is a source code build directions on the fldigi-wiki Which I will follow.
Create a directory to store your source code:
$ mkdir source
Download the FLDIGI source and untar it:
$ tar zxvf fldigi-.tar.gz
I followed the direction and it worked like a charm. Because I have PulseAudio installed already, I do not need to install that or add myself to the dialout group.
Our own Bill, K5AE, answers the question – do Tiger Tails work? He has put together this video with a lot of excellent supporting research and background material.
YouTube: https://youtu.be/BztTRFxsxNs
Please comment directly on his page.
I have sent the following letter to our State Senator in response to the limitations on Amateur Radio operations in SB74.
Sen McPike/info Dels Carter/Roem:
In reviewing SB74 as written (or at least as available to those of us outside the halls of government), https://legiscan.com/VA/text/SB74/2018, it is still not acceptable to restrict Amateur Radio operations as outlined in section B6, while not limiting Citizen’s Band (CB) operations, as listed in section B5.
I do not understand the exact rationale behind the limitations for Amateur Radio or the lack of constraints for CB operations. I would suggest section B5 read:
The use of Citizens Band, or other federally licensed radio services. (Citizens Band radio operations do not require a federal license, while others do, either by examination or payment of fee.)
Barring that, allow me to illustrate the issues associated with section B6 in its current form:
Vehicles used or operated by federally licensed amateur radio operators (i) while participating in emergency communications or drills on behalf of federal, state, or local authorities or (ii) to provide communications services to localities in the Commonwealth for public service events, including marathons, footraces, or activities authorized by the Department of Transportation or the locality in which the event is being conducted;
There are several challenges with this section.
1) At the gross level, how is a law enforcement officer supposed to differentiate between an Amateur Radio operator and a CB operator? The obvious answer is they cannot, at a glance tell the difference, making the law either unenforceable or placing a considerable burden on the general public to educate the officer at the time of the stop. As a member of the Amateur Radio community and the Jeep community, I have both an Amateur radio, and a CB radio mounted in my vehicle, and I am not alone. It is not just truckers who use CB. (In fact, most truck fleets are using satellite [VSAT] for tracking and communications along with cellular technology.)
But, for a moment pretend that a distinction can be made:
2) while participating in emergency communications or drills on behalf of federal, state, or local authorities.
The key problem here is in deciding what form of authorization is going to be required to prove we are participating. A disaster declaration? A calendar entry? Many of our drills and exercises are done without the direct knowledge of our supported agencies. What sort of proof would be needed to show we were participating in a drill on behalf of our agency? Would it fall the to the Amateur Radio community to provide proof that we were in fact involved in an exercise, and would it then be up to the judge to accept or reject that evidence? Because it is not well defined, that is an onerous burden to place on hobbyists, especially those of us like myself in leadership positions.
3) to provide communications services to localities in the Commonwealth for public service events, including marathons, footraces, or activities authorized by the Department of Transportation or the locality in which the event is being conducted;
Again, what constitutes such events? When is it deemed acceptable to be supporting them? I will use the Marine Corps Program Office events in Prince William County as an example. In the spring the MCM puts on the Crossroads 17.75. The race functionally runs from 0700 – 1100 on a Saturday morning. However, because of road closures and the need to circumnavigate the Prince William forest to get into position, we often are required to start operations as much as two hours before the event. Frequently we will continue to support the event several hours after the runners have gone home as we aid in tear down and clean up. This is only one example; there are many more. In my years as Emergency Coordinator, I can cite numerous cases where we are out preparing to support an activity weeks in advance of that activity, so we are ready to assist. This includes site surveys, propagation studies, antenna position tests, etc. Would this be acceptable under this clause? What proof would be needed? What about after the fact testing? Who makes the decisions?
4) Process and Reporting. The above two sections, if enacted, would entail a new level of process and paperwork within the Amateur communities that does not exist today and would have to be modified with each judgment for or against our operators. Amateur Radio operators are hobbyists at the core of their being. They are not career first-responders (although some may be). They give of their time to support the community, but it is not all they do. To have to ensure that the right pieces of paper are filed or verify that they can use their radios while in motion would place an unnecessary burden on them.
5) General communications. Most Amateur Radio operators do not have radios in their vehicles to be ready for a disaster. Only a small portion of the Amateur Radio community is involved in disaster preparation and response. Most operators have a radio in their vehicle merely to talk to other operators. While this may seem odd in this day of ubiquitous cell phones, there are numerous advantages, least of which is a roundtable discussion format that you cannot do with a cell phone (or at least without some type of conference feature). I have used my radio during times of cellular overload (which happens more than you might think) to get a report of traffic ahead of me (more efficient and safer than opening up an application and punching around to find your location). We discuss upcoming events, propagation, and other general topics — much like those who use CB — all within the bounds of our license restrictions for use of the public airwaves.
In looking at this law, I have outlined the case against a specific set of restrictions for the use of Amateur Radio and highlighted many of the reasons why these restrictions, if implemented, would be detrimental to the use of Amateur Radio while also placing a burden on law enforcement to determine what radio was in use that instigated the traffic stop. I would encourage the adoption of the language I suggest for section B5 and drop the section B6 for the benefit of all.
Here we go again, it is a new year, and that means new things to talk about.
Let’s start with what the ARRL has in store. I forwarded an email from the League in late December that essentially said changes are coming to the ARES program in 2018. Details to follow. You now know as much as I do about what those changes are. But, I can make some guesses. First, I would guess that all ARES members are going to be required to take some Incident Command classes. Likely ICS 100 and 200. But since you are a member of PWCARES, and Prince William County already requires us to take not only 100 & 200, but also 700 (NIMS) and 800 (NRF), we are ahead of the game. Prince William County will also require some additional classes this year, and as they tell me what they are (and how we can get them), I will pass them on and include them in our required training regime.
Speaking of training, this year, Prince William County will be having at least one, and possibly three training events. They will focus on Shelter activities, a national event based on a hurricane coming up the Chesapeake Bay, and a full county activation exercise. Again, once things are nailed down, I will pass on the details.
Also, our friends at the Marine Corps Marathon program office are excited with how we performed at the regular events we have supported in the past (Crossroads and Turkey Trot) plus how we stepped up at the Quantico 100 and especially the Triathlon. So excited in fact, that this year, they want us to support the Triathlon & 12K again (August 25), as well as the Run Amuck (June 23), along with the Crossroads (March 24) and Turkey Trot (November 17). The dates will be added to the calendar. There is no Quantico 100 scheduled for this year as it was a one-time thing. They have also asked for our help in the Historic Half marathon that happens in Fredericksburg. As it is outside the PWCARES area, I have politely declined, but the ARES team down there may need some help. Also, the Big Event, the Marathon, is on October 28 and all the help they can get is appreciated.
Finally, what do you want to focus on this year? Some topics have been flying around the Slack channel, and they include APRS, Wire Antennas in EmComm, and HF operations for EmComm. Also, coming up in June, Field Day 2018! An opportunity for us to show our stuff. It has been a decade since our last field day. Maybe we can start a tradition!
Our first meeting of the year is Saturday, January 20, 2018, at 0900 at the EOC. We will discuss the Action Plan (as we always do), review the new EOC layout, and hopefully get a chance to see the new WebEOC. I encouraged everyone to come out, meet your fellow ARES members, and contribute to this year’s event calendar.
See you then!