DAREN of WV News March 1, 2020(E43)
(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.
I made a trip to Tyler County on Friday to pick up the old Tyler County Amateur Radio Club equipment. The club closed down, and because of their 501c3 Tax Exempt status, they needed to get rid of all their equipment and assets to another 501c3 Tax Exempt organization. I picked up the 147.36 Mhz repeater system, and the old Tyler County DAREN NODE/PBBS station of TYLEWV/MIDBWV. The repeater and DAREN station have been off the air for several years. After their VHF voice repeater and DAREN tower site lost its power feed, the landowner said they needed to take their tower down. The club told WCEC (Wood County Emergency Communications) they could have the tower if they would take it down. A few members of WCEC took the tower down a few years ago. Last summer I cleaned up, and painted the tower, and we're in the process of installing it at a hilltop location here in Wood County. The old Tyler County DAREN station was equipped with a Kantronics KPC-3 TNC. I've upgraded the TNC from a VER 5.0 with 32K of memory to a VER 8.2 and 128K of memory. The old transceiver has a problem and is only putting out about one watt of RF power. If I can't repair the RF power problem, I'm going to rebuild the station with another transceiver, and try to put it back in operation. I'm going to do some checking around Tyler County to find a place to put it back in operation.
Don't forget the Charleston Hamfest will be held in about a week on March 14th. Information about the Hamfest can be found on the Internet.
There were only 29 check-ins to the Statewide DAREN Net this week. There was one new operator that checked into the net this week and that was Mike Turner, K4MIC, from Sugar Grove, WV. I want to welcome Mike to the DAREN system and hope he can check into the net as often as he can.