DAREN of WV News June 30, 2019 (E08)
(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 Statewide 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 Field Day is over, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done. Even if you had a great Field Day, I'm sure you found things that could have been better. I didn't do much DAREN or Packet activity this week, I've been trying to get all the records put together to send the Field Day report to the ARRL. The WCEC (Wood County Emergency Communications) group and the PARK (Parkersburg Amateur Radio Klub) got extra bonus points this year by sending their messages to the ARRL Section Manager and the Section Emergency Coordinator using the WAVEWV Internet/Interface system, operated by Conard Richardson, KE8HLU. The Field Day rules says the messages have to leave the Field Day site by Amateur Radio, on Amateur Radio frequencies, and that's where the DAREN system is at. The WCEC group did something they hadn't been doing when installing the Field Day antennas. This year we decided to check out the coax cables before connecting them to the antennas. We put a 50-ohm dummy load on one end of the coax, and used the MFJ 259 antenna analyzer on the other. We found that we had a couple bad coaxes, that we may have been using in the past. Even though the coaxes didn't look the best, they would still tune with a tuner, but the antennas probably wouldn't radiate very well. Since we have been making sure the antennas are tuned to their frequency before connecting the transmission lines, using good coax made a big difference. If your group learned anything during Field Day, that other groups might like to know, let me know so I can pass it on. That what Field Day is for.
There were 31 check-ins to the Statewide DAREN Net this week. Anna Hendershot, KC8JWW, who has been participating in the net since May 9. 1998, has completed 1100 check-ins. Randy Thomas, K8KHW, who has been participating in the net since February 13, 1999, has completed 750 check-ins. And, Remington Sweitzer, KB3TXG, who has been participating in the net since October 2, 2010, has completed 300 check-ins. All of these operators will be receiving their certificates as soon as I can get back to printing up certificates. Jim Woodford, KC8MLK, needs only one more check-in to make 750.