DAREN of WV News November 15, 2015(.C19)
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.
Things have been pretty quite this week. My Nephew Sammy Mercer, N8SVX, and I are planning to make a trip to Jackson County on Tuesday, to work on the DAREN NODE/PBBS of JACKWV/RPLYWV. We worked on the station several months back, while we were at the Jackson County Hamfest, but didn't have what we needed to make it right. We are sure the transceiver is putting out very low power. When we worked on it the last time we also found the power supply was dead, and we didn't have a new one to put in it's place. The only thing that we had with us, was a 12 volt, 3 amp computer power supply, so we thought we would try to use it. This time we are going to the site with a complete new station. On the way back from Jackson County, we are going to stop by the Wirt County DAREN NODE/PBBS of WIRTWV/ELIZWV, and check it out. The audio from that station has a lot of hum in it, we suspect it is a bad power supply, but we will have a complete station to change it out, if needed. While we are at both locations, we are going to experiment with 20 feet of mast pipe, and a J-Pole antenna. If it works as well as we hope, we may start installing new DAREN stations in that manner. If the tower sites are on very high hilltops, or mountaintops, the Packet antennas don't have to be very high. The main thing is to get from one county site to another county site, or several sites. That way we don't have to get permission to climb towers. The mast pipe and antenna can just be attached to a building, or strapped to a fence post surrounding the tower site.
A week or so after we get the Jackson County and Wirt County stations in good working order, I'm also planning to make a trip to the Wetzel County NODE/PBBS of WETZWV/NMARWV. The last two times I went to Wetzel County, I found the transceiver had lost its memory, and was sitting on 145.00 MHz. I just had to re-program it. If that's the problem this time, I'm going to change out the transceiver.
I think over the winter I will be working on a bunch of transceivers, and TNCs that need repaired. I have several of each that have been damaged over the 20 years or more of the DAREN system. Some of the transceivers won't power up, some have no, or very low output power. Some of them have no receiver audio, and a couple of them have transmit and receive frequencies that are different then what the display shows. I'm sure I'll have my hands full, but by next spring or summer, maybe I'll have some more replacement stations to start all over again.
There were 40 check-ins to the State Wide DAREN Net this week. There were two new stations that checked into the net this week and they were: Gregory Day, N8GD, from Wintersville, Ohio, and Kenneth Gilcrest, AB8KT, from Toronto, Ohio. I don't know what route or path they used to get into the net, but I'm glad to see they made it. I want to welcome both of them to the DAREN system, and hope they use DAREN, and can check into the net as often as possible. I didn't get all of the DAREN Check-in Certificates printed, that I had hoped, but I plan on finishing them up this coming week.