Monthly Archives: January 2019

Amateur Radio Emergency Service, Events

Welcome to ARES Connect

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.

Amateur Radio Emergency Service, PWCARES, Training

January Training Update

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:

Upcoming Events

There are a number of events coming up this year. First for the Marine Corps Program Office.

  • Crossroads 17.75K (March 23)
  • Run Amuck/Belleau Wood (June 15)
  • Quantico Tri/Quantico 12K (August 24)
  • Turkey Trot (Our November Training (November 16)
  • Honor 8K (December 7)

Other fun events:

  • United Resolve HF CommEx with the National Guard (June 1)
  • Save Our Wounded Warrior Bike Ride (June 8)
  • Field Day (June 22 – June 23)
  • The Simulated Emergency Test (2nd Weekend of October)

Routine events:

Training

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.

Paperwork

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.