DAREN of WV News December 8, 2019(E31)
(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.
Bill Davidson, N8JXO, and I attended a meeting in Ripley on Thursday. We were within a couple miles of the Jackson County NODE/PBBS of JACKWV/RPLYWV. But since I wasn't doing the driving I didn't get a chance to stop by the station to see why it's off the air. At the meeting I did get to talk to Larry Cook, KC8ZRE. Larry is one of the custodians of the Jackson County Amateur Radio Club repeater on 146.67 MHz. Their repeater is at the same tower site location as the DAREN station. Larry said he needs to make a trip to the tower to do some work on their voice repeater and might take a look at the DAREN station. If I get a chance, I'll make a special trip down and work on the station.
I noticed that on page 58 of the December 2019 issue of the QST magazine, the ARRL (American Radio Relay League) has renewed a request to the FCC. The request is to replace the symbol rate with bandwidth limit. If it's what I think they are talking about, it will allow the use of 1200 baud packet on the HF frequencies below 29.7 MHz. At the present time only 300 baud packet can be used below 29.7 MHz. If they can get the FCC to allow 1200 baud packet on the HF bands, that would be great. There are some 300 baud packet operator on HF, but not very many. A couple or three have found their way over to the DAREN system. If 1200 baud packet is allowed, that might get more Amateurs interested in packet and get more operators. We keep losing packet nodes, digipeaters, and mailboxes on the DAREN system as we lose operators. Allowing 1200 baud packet on HF, and having stations such as the ones that Conard Richardson, KE8HLU, and his dad Phil, KE8GCL, have on 20 and 40 Meters that cross over to the DAREN system may get more interest in rebuilding the DAREN system. At one time we didn't want a bunch of traffic on the DAREN system that would clutter it up, but we do need some activity to keep it up and operational, and that's one reason we hold the State Wide DAREN Net once a week. Most of the activity that would be on the DAREN system would be Keyboard-to-Keyboard and wouldn't be like the old days when there were several Amateur Radio packet bulletin boards that were set up for buy, sell, and trade. Keyboard-to-Keyboard traffic wouldn't clutter up the DAREN system, unless they were typing 1200 words a minute, and I don't know of anyone who can type that fast. If we get a chance to vote on the higher symbol rate on HF, I think we should vote to have it raised.
There were 32 check-ins to the Statewide DAREN Net this week. Mark Sweitzer, KD8MIV, who's been participating in the net since September 25, 2010, has completed 350 check-ins, and will be receiving his certificate.