DAREN of WV News January 24, 2016 (.C29)
WA8LLM (304) 679-3470 wa8llm@yahoo.com
WOOD COUNTY EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS, 319 COMMUNICATIONS DR, WAVERLY, WV 26184
www.wc8ec.com or 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 www.wc8ec.com and www.wc8ec.org websites.
I talked to Matt Gregg, KD8OMT, on one of the 2 Meter Voice Nets last week. Matt told me the group that maintains the Mason County NODE/PBBS on the DAREN frequency, is going to be taking the station off the air for a couple of weeks to work on it. He said he would let me know when it's put back on the air.
I talked to Cappy Caplinger, WV8KDC, on the telephone today. He said the Mineral County NODE/PBBS of MINEWV/KEYSWV is off the air again. It seems that every time there is a power outage, the TNC (Terminal Node Controller) loses its memory and needs to be reprogrammed. He said that Quentin (Butch) Sayers Jr., who used to be N8RCG, but is now WV8BS, will try to get to the tower site and get it back in service. They think the memory battery in the TNC is bad, and are going to put a new one in it.
A couple of weeks ago I had mentioned that Keith Dobbins, N8KLD, gave me a suggestion on how to interface a TNC with the Motorola Maratrac radios that we have. His suggestion was to connect the TNC into to RJ-45 programming jack. Since the programming jack has all of the needed connections, including the positive 12 volts and ground, to make it work. While my nephew Sammy Mercer, N8SVX, was at my house on Tuesday, we made up an interface cable to go between the RJ-45 programming jack, and the TNC. Without doing any level adjusts on the radio or the TNC, the system works on the first try. To get to the RJ-45 programming jack with the top cover of the radio in place, we needed to cut a hole over the programming jack. We are now ready to put together some Packet Radio station to replace some of the stations that are giving us problems.
There were 44 check-ins to the State Wide DAREN Net this week. Lisa Hendershot. KB8UER, who has been participating in the net since August 20, 1994, has completed 1100 check-ins and will be receiving her certificate. I didn't mention last week that we had a new check-in to the DAREN Net. Kenneth (Cappy) Caplinger, WV8KDC, from Keyser, WV, checked into the net for the first time. I want to welcome Cappy to the DAREN system, and hope he can participate in the net as often as possible.