DAREN of WV News January 11, 2015                  (.B75)
                   WA8LLM (304) 679-3470 wa8llm@yahoo.com
   WOOD COUNTY EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS, P.O. BOX 3328, PARKERSBURG, WV 26103
                              http://www.wc8ec.com

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.com website.

I got an E-Mail Matt Gregg, KD8OMT, who's the WV ARRL Section Emergency Coordinator.  Matt said the Mason County Amateurs now have a DAREN type station on the air.  The station is located in Letart, WV.  The antenna for the station is a Diamond X50 which is located at 936 feet on the tower, and the Packet transceiver is operating at 18 Watts.  The antenna is being used for both the Packet station and their 444.300 MHz Repeater, operating at 20 Watts.  The UHF Voice repeater has a CTCSS Tone is 91.5 Hz.  I was able to connect to the Packet station from my house, after I shut down the CW Practice Transmitter. The CW Practice Transmitter is only 60 KHz from the DAREN frequency, so it makes it hard to connect to any DAREN stations that are very far away, when it is on the air.

While I was cleaning up the list of stations who have been participating in the State Wide DAREN, I got to checking to see how many stations have participated in the net since it first started.  There have been over 700 Amateurs who have checked into the net at least once since its first operation on October 31, 1992.  It's hard to believe there have been that many Amateurs who have operated Packet Radio, and checked into the DAREN Nets.  At one period of time there were over 100 check-ins each week who checked into the weekly net.

There were 43 check-ins to the State Wide DAREN Net this week.  John Peterson, K8ZPR, who has been participating in the net since April 23, 1994, has completed 1050 check-ins and will be receiving his certificate.  Judy Peterson, N8UFQ, needs only one more check-in to make 1150.  There was a new callsign on the net this week, and that was N8KLD.  I had already been told there would be a callsign change from one of our regular net participants.  Keith Dobins, who used to be KC8RFW, has changed his call to N8KLD.