DAREN of WV News April 13, 2014 (.B36)
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.
I got an E-Mail from Tom White, W3JTW, about not being able to get into the State Wide DAREN Net this week. He said that he was only able to get connected into the Mineral County NODE/PBBS of MINEWV/KEYSWV, and couldn't go any farther. While I was posting the DAREN News and State Wide DAREN Net Announcement last week I was also having trouble with the MINEWV/KEYSWV station. I was able to go through it one time, but that was all. I wasn't able to connect to the PBBS at all. When I got the E-Mail from Tom, I tried again to connect to the PBBS, but had no luck. A couple weeks back when I was posting the News and the Announcements, I kept getting a "Link Busy" message like someone else was using the PBBS. I tried for several hours with the same results. I finally gave up on it. The PBBS is supposed to disconnect after 10 minutes of no activity, but I was not able to get into it that week, but the following week, it seems to be okay. Tom and I think the TNC of the station needs to be reset. If anyone knows how to get a hold of SYSOP for the station, maybe we can get it reset.
I'm going to be busy this coming week. I'll be holding a one day Technician Class License class in Marietta, Ohio. The person who is setting up the class said that he is excepting 15 to 20 people for the class. I need to get copies of the Question Pool printed up, and all of the other material and tests ready. I'm also building a racing clock to be used at one of the many road and cross county races that our communications group helps with each year. If I get the clock completed, and can use it for the road races on April 26th and May 17th, I'm planning on building several more, and have them ready for the Parkersburg Half Marathon, which will be held in August.
My Nephew Sammy, N8SVX, is planning to come to the house on Tuesday and work on the HSMM-MESH system that we are starting put together here in Wood County. He is printing all the maps that we need to plot the Line-of-Site paths, so we know which of the 2.4 GHz Nodes will be the first ones to go into operation. There are several of the HSMM-MESH systems in operation throughout the United States. If you do a Goggle Search for HSMM-MESH, you will be surprised how many there are. There is a lot of information about HSMM-MESH that can be found on the Internet. Amateur Radio shares some of the channels of the License Free 2.4 GHz Band, which means higher then 1/2 Watt Transceiver Nodes can be used. I'll keep you posted as to how our system is coming along.
There were only 42 check-ins to the State Wide DAREN Net this week.