DAREN of WV News April 8, 2018(.D44)
(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 just got home from being in the woods for a few hours. Eleven Amateurs helped provide the safety communications for the Annual Challenge at Mountwood Mountain Bike Race. The day started out pretty cold, but the Amateurs were a lot warmer than most of the Bike Racers who were wearing shorts and light weight shirts or jackets. We think that due to the forecasted weather, the attendance of the racers was down a little bit, but there were still about 175 racers. There were only 44 Expert Riders that had to ride the 24 mile race course. Even with all the bike trails, which were muddy, there were no major injuries. It's fun to help with this event, sometimes you get to learn new cuss words as the racers come down a 45 degree muddy hill with a 90 degree turn at the bottom, which, if they don't make, they get to go over a 50 foot drop off. I'd would rather be operating a radio.
Our next outside event will be the Vienna River Road Fun Run which will be held on Saturday, April 28th, in Vienna. It will be a 5 Mile Run/2 Mile Walk. The Amateurs will be providing the safety communications and operating the racing clocks.
I had planned to make a trip to the Ritchie County NODE/PBBS after the bike race was over, but it was late getting out of the woods. I was tired after walking several miles back into the woods to my assigned location. The DAREN Packet station is located at the same location of the Wood County 147.255 Mhz voice repeater, which is on the top of a hill at Mountwood Park, so I wasn't very far from it. I'll make a special trip in the next few days to work on the station. There's several things I want to do at the tower site anyway.
Next Saturday the Wood County Emergency Communications VE Testing group will be hold W5YI VE Exams. The exams will be held at the Parkersburg North End Public Library at 12:00 noon.
Don't forget to mark your calendars for a couple hamfests. The Athens County, Ohio Hamfest will be held on April 29th in Athens, Ohio. The Jackson County Hamfest will be at the Ripley Middle School on Sunday, May 6th in Ripley.
There were only 29 check-ins again to the State Wide DAREN Net this week.
That's it for this week. Maybe the weather will get warmer so we can get outside.