DAREN of WV News January 21, 2018(.D33)
(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 think I figured out why the Wood County NODE/PBBS of WOODWV/PKBGWV has been going down. I think the problem is with the Transceiver. The radio is a Yeasu FT-1500, and it may be cold sensitive. Every time the temperature goes below 25 Degrees or so, it quits working. I went back to the December 2015 and January 2016 DAREN News and found I had the same type problems during the very cold winter months. Last year was a fairly mild winter and there was no problems at all. I have been communicating with Gene Roy, N8ER, and he has noticed there is a very poor path between WOODWV and the Randolph County NODE of RANDWV. There used to be a good path between them. Most of the time I am able to connect to RANDWV direct from my house with very little trouble, which tells me the trouble is with the WOODWV/PKBGWV station. When summer gets here, and before I start getting too busy with my other activities, I will need to change out the Wood County station with one of the 100 Watt Motorola radios, that may fix a few problems. While I'm at it I need to get the Wetzel County NODE/PBBS of WETZWV/NMARWV back on the air.
This spring or summer we may be able to get the Pleasants County NODE/PBBS of PLEAWV/STMYWV back on the air. Since the Amateurs in Pleasant County don't have a voice repeater we have been planning to put one up there. I've been talking with one of the new Amateurs in Pleasants County who lives on one of the higher hills in the county. Larry Barnhart, KE8GXL, said that we can place a tower out back of his two story garage. Larry lives right along a main road going into St Marys. Terry Mils, KC8TUE, and I met with Larry at the garage and looked the site over. The site is several feet higher than the original location of the DAREN station, before the old tower came down. Larry is also one of the Pleasants County Commissioners. I'll start getting the material needed to get the tower installed. The tower will only be about 50 feet tall. When the weather gets better we will start putting it up. The voice repeater will be on a 443 MHz UHF frequency.
There were 30 check-ins to the State Wide DAREN Net this week. Jeffrey Hensley, WD4VA, needs only one more check-in to make 300. There was one new check-in to the net this week and that was James (Conrad) Richardson, KE8HLU, from Waverly, WV. I want to welcome Conrad to the DAREN system, and hope he checks into the State Wide DAREN Net as often as he can. There was one station that checked into the net with the call of SV2AGW. If you were that station, and want to change the call, let me know.