D.A.R.E.N. News 2013

DAREN of WV News July 7, 2013(.A96)
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.

A couple weeks ago I posted information about Randy Thomas, K8KHW's new upgraded Winlink 2000 Internet system.  Since then he has sent me some more information.  The Winlink system has an option of keeping some spam off the system, it called a whitelist (accept list).  To assure that a Winlink user receives a sender's E-mail, the sender's E-mail address must be listed in the recipient's whitelist. If the sender's address is not there the message will be rejected.  This restriction can be bypassed by including a special precedence keyword in the Subject Line of each message.  If you place a special precedence keyword in the Subject Line of the message, the E-Mail should go through.  When you start the Subject Line on the message, place the command //WL2K before typing the subject title.  An example would be: //WL2K Test Message Doing that should let the message be sent through the Winlink system to be delivered via the Internet.  There are other commands that can also be used to send important messages called Message Precedence Categories.  Precedence categories are Flash (Z), Immediate (O), Priority (P), and Routine (R).  Flash and Immediate messages are reserved for urgent messages.  The precedence indicator is included in a Winlink message by adding one of the following to the beginning of the Subject Line in a message, whether originated from Internet E-Mail, or within the Winlink system.

//WL2K Z/   - Flash (for urgent message use only) //WL2K O/   - Immediate (for urgent message use only) //WL2K P/   - Priority //WL2K R/   - Routine (Default)

Reply and Forward messages will be treated with the same priority as the original message unless the precedence indicator is changed in the subject line when replying to, or forwarding a message.  Here are some examples of acceptable subject lines using the precedence indicators:

//WL2K Z/EOC FLOODING //WL2K O/SHELTER STATUS - FULL //WL2K P/Food and bedding inventory request //WL2K R/Supplies received Re://WL2K R/Generator manual needed FW://WL2K R/Please bring Gasoline

Unless there is some special circumstance, Routing precedence //WL2K R/) should be used.  The "//WL2K" informs the Winlink mail processing system to allow the message to be forwarded to the Winlink user.  This code may be changed from time-to-time.  The remaining characters in the precedence string determines the priority of message handling.  As Randy says, in a nutshell, simply put //WL2K in the subject line first then the subject: //WL2K TEST MESSAGE and all will go through fine.

There were 43 check-ins to the State Wide DAREN Net this week.  Randy Thomas, K8KHW, who's been participating in the net since February 13, 1999, has completed 500 check-ins.  And, Daniel Ritchie, KC8ZLK, who's been participating in the net since June 26, 2006, has completed 350 check-ins.  Both of these operators will be receiving their certificates.  I'm starting to get behind on printing up the certificates, but I'm planning to get caught up this week.  I'm not as far behind as the last time, yet.