DAREN of WV News February 28, 2016 (.C34)
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.
Even though it's the 28th of February, that doesn't mean it's the last of the month, since this is a Leap Year.
I heard Ken (Cappy) Caplinger, WV8KDC, say on the WV Fone Net this week that he and Quentin (Butch) Sayers Jr., WV8BS, made a trip to the Mineral County NODE/PBBS of MINEWV/KEYSWV, to work on the station. He said they are not through working on the station, and it still needs some programming, but at least it is back in good working order.
On Wednesday, the commercial power went off at the tower site of the Ritchie County NODE/PBBS of RITCWV/HRVLWV. It looks like the batteries need to be changed out since the station only stayed on the air for about 6 hours. The batteries also supply the back-up power for the Wood County Emergency Communications 147.255 MHz voice repeater, a couple commercial UHF voice repeaters, and a paging transmitter. During the wind storm that went through the state on June 29th, 2012, the batteries powered all of the stations for about 6 days before they went dead, when the commercial power went off. We were lucky the power came back on around 12 noon on Thursday, so I didn't have to put a temporary NODE/PBBS on the air for the State Wide DAREN Net. It seems that when something like a power failure makes you think how to get communications back in operation. We are already working on back-up systems for the next time the commercial power goes off. We are also planning to replace the batteries, when we can get to the tower site.
There were 38 check-ins to the State Wide DAREN Net this week. There was one new check-in to the net this week, and that was Bret Johnson, KE8DAC, from Newport, Ohio. I want to welcome Bret to the DAREN system and hope he participates in the State Wide DAREN Net as often as possible.