DAREN of WV News July 1, 2012(.A43)
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.
If you operated Field Day this year, I hope you learned enough to help you with the storm that went through West Virginia Friday evening. I lost my power and as I'm writing this news, it's still off. It may be another day or two before we get our power back on. It's a good thing the storm went through the area in the summer, and not the winter. I think the whole state lost power and a lot of people that I've talked to said they weren't as prepared as they thought. I've just got off the radio with a couple of people who are needing gas, and trying to find a service station that has electricity, and has gas. The service stations that got there power back on has lines several blocks long with cars waiting for gas. This is a good experience to learn from. It's hard to believe how much we depend on our electricity and gasoline. When the commercial power goes off a lot more than just the heat and air conditioning are lost. The main telephone offices have backup generators with enough fuel to last a week or so, but not everyone has telephone service which comes directly out of the telephone offices. A lot of people whole live three or more miles from the main telephone offices get their telephone service out of remote cabinets that don't have generators, only batteries as their back-up power. The batteries are supposed to be good for about eight hours, but that depends on how good of shape they are in. The cabinet that I work out of just had the batteries changed a couple of years ago, and we kept telephone service for about ten hours after the power went off. Before they were changed, the telephone service went out 5 or 10 minutes after the power went off. A lot of the Cellular Telephone tower sites only have batteries and will be going down when the battery voltage drops. Also a lot of the DAREN NODEs are backed up with battery power, but they will only last so long. I noticed the State Wide DAREN Net had a lot less check-ins then usual. It could be that some of the NODEs were down, or the people who normally check in didn't have a back-up power source for their radios. I hope everyone learns from this experience and prepares for the next one. By the time I post this week's DAREN News and Net Announcement, the power may, or not be back on.
There were only 38 check-ins to the State Wide DAREN Net this week. It's possible that several DAREN NODEs are without power, and are off the air. Tom White W3JTW, needs only one more check-in to make 600. I received an E-Mail from Tom before my power and Internet went down, and there may be a mis-count between his numbers and mine, so as soon as I get power back I'll do some recounting. Daniel Ritchie, KC8ZLK, needs only one more check-in to make 300.