DAREN of WV News October 21, 2012(.A59)
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.
Yesterday, Terry Mills, KC8TUE, Krista Mills, KC8VLJ, my wife Dot, KC8HAI, and I made a trip to the Wetzel County tower site to repair the NODE/PBBS of WETZWV/NMARWV. Before we made the trip, I put together a complete new station just in case it would be needed. When we got there the transmission line and antenna looked good, but the power supply was dead, of course the batteries were dead. When we tested the transceiver and TNC, we found the transceiver came on with the frequency still the same, but the TNC wouldn't light up. We tested the antenna and transmission line with an antenna analyzer, and it tested good, so we installed the new station. We tested several paths and they seemed to be okay. So I guess it will be good until the next time. I'm planning to make a trip to the Wirt County tower site in a couple of weeks and re-install a station there. The Wirt County site was taken off the air when it was suspected the switching power that we were using was causing noise to another radio system. All of this work is being done in preparation for the regional hospital drill that will held on December 6th. Communications is one of the top items the officials are wanting to test. They are wanting to test the JEMNet (Joint Emergency Management Network) system which operates on 800 Mhz. I operate a net on that system every Friday at 9:00 am, and out of at least seven locations that will be participating in the drill, three of the location have not been answering for a few months. I want to make sure that Amateur Radio will be a good back-up for their drill. If anyone wants to participate in the exercise on December 6th, just connect into the Chat Room system, CHATRM, at about 8:00 am. The Chat Room can be accessed from any NODE that can connect to the Ritchie County NODE of RITCWV, since they are at the same location, and they share the same transceiver and antenna.
There were 47 check-ins again to the State Wide DAREN Net this week. Krista Mills, KC8VLJ, who's been participating in the net since December 28, 2002, has completed 450 check-ins and will be receiving her certificate. Gene Roy, N8ER, needs only one more check-in to make 1000. Anna Hendershot, KC8JWW, needs only one more check-in to make 750. And, Tiffany Cutlip, KC8PNI, needs only one more check-in to make 50.