DAREN of WV News June 25, 2017 (.D03)
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 hope everyone had a great Field Day. Wood County Emergency Communications (WCEC) operated as WC8EC 5A WV. This year we tried to operate 160 Meters. We put up a 160 Meter Loop antenna, but we didn't make very many contacts with it. We are going to try an Inverted V Antenna next year. We also used an 8 element Coaxial Collinear Antenna to monitor the National Simplex Frequency of 446.000 MHz. We didn't hear anything on it. Six Meters kind of opened up during the last few hours of the event, and we made a few contacts on it. We had a CW station set up that was using Solar Power only. But, since I was the only CW operator, and I had to keep going around the other stations setting up equipment and correcting problems, I only got to make a little over 60 contacts on CW. One of the problems I worked on was putting together a PSK31 station. I had several homemade Soundcard Interface Cards which I built, and brought to the site, but only used one of them. We got a couple new operators who would like to operate PSK31 next year, so I need to put together a couple PSK31 stations, and make sure they are working before Field Day next year. We also had the regular voice stations on 75 Meters, 40 Meters, and 20 Meters. The Wood County Sheriff and a member of the House of Delegates showed up for our elected officials. Jim Rose, KD8ITI, from the Mid-Ohio Valley Health Department, and his wife Kim, KD8ITH, from Camden Clark Hospital, showed up as our served agencies. We tried to send a couple RADIOGRAM messages using the Winlink 2000, but had trouble connecting to it. We still had a great time, and never went hungry since there was plenty of food and cooks. I think there was someone eating the whole time.
If anyone has anything they would like to report about their Field Day activity let me know.
There were 38 check-ins to the net this week. Frank Hughes, WD8DEP, needs only one more check-in to make 600. There were two new participates to the net this week and they were Aaron Wegman, KE8FVA, from Coalton, WV, and Michael Carr, KE8FUW, from Elkins, WV. I would say they were operating from a Field Day site. I still want to welcome both of them to the DAREN system and hope they get hooked on Packet Radio, and start checking into the net on a regular basis.