DAREN of WV News June 24, 2012(.A42)
WA8LLM (304) 679-3470 wa8llm@yahoo.com
WOOD COUNTY EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS
P.O. BOX 3328, PARKERSBURG, WV 26103
http://www.wc8ec.org
DAREN News, are articles and information about the Digital Amateur Radio "Emergency" Network of WV, which operates on 145.69 MHz. Anyone having any information about DAREN, or Amateur Radio in general, and would like to share it with others, may send it to WA8LLM @ PKBGWV on 145.69 MHz, or to my E-Mail: wa8llm@yahoo.com. A State Wide DAREN NET is operated every Saturday from 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm, and lately, before and after those hours. The DAREN Net Announcement, showing the MAIN NCS, ALTERNATE NCS, NODEs accessible to both, and the previous week's check-ins, are posted by Thursday on most of the Main county DAREN PBBS'. The DAREN News can also be found on the wc8ec.org website.
Well, Field Day is over for another year. Did you learn anything that will make it easier next year. Our communications group operated 5 transmitters using both a generator and solar power. The solar power was just used for the CW station which didn't make very any contacts. Since I'm the only one who operates CW, and the one who was busy helping set up all of the stations, I was wore out by the time I got to my station. Then the county and state visitors starting showing up, and guess who got to talk to them, and show them around the site. Our communication group uses Field Day to work out problems with the equipment and figure new ways of making emergency set ups easier. Most of the operators had a good time even during the night when the temperature starting dropping. We had a nice big bond fire, so we were able to keep warm. Since there was no rain this year the sun made it pretty warm in the tents, but we had plenty of fans to keep us cool. There's a few things that we wanted to do, but didn't find the time to do them. We were going to find out when the International Space Station was supposed to go over, and try to talk to them, but that didn't happen. I don't know if the 6 and 10 meter bands weren't open, or we just couldn't get the radios to work, so we didn't make any contacts on those bands. Maybe next year we will put up a 160 Meter Band antenna and try that. If you had any experiences you would like to share about Field Day let me know so I will have something to write about. I want to thank Randy Thomas, K8KHW, for having his Winlink 2000 system, K8KHW-10, up and running over Field Day. We were able to send 11 ARRL RADIOGRAMs during the Field Day period to make an additional 200 bonus points.
There were 53 check-ins to the State Wide DAREN Net again this week. No one needs only one more check-in to make any multiple of 50, or has completed any multiple of 50. I noticed that three operators checked into the net that I hadn't seen since last Field Day. It looks as if there was one other Field Day site that had a Packet Radio system set up for Field Day.