DAREN of WV News December 13, 2021(E84)
(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 had to send my truck in for repair service on Tuesday, so I didn't have all of the equipment I needed, but we did have enough to install a couple more Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network (AREDN) 2.4 GHz HSMM (High Speed MultiMedia) nodes. I didn't want to waste a couple good weather days, Thursday and Friday, so we decided to install the two nodes at that time. I had tested both sites a few weeks ago, so I figured we would have a couple fair sites for the AREDN system, but they didn't work out as good as I had hoped. I don't know if it was just a good radio day when we tested the sites, or the antennas aren't as good as I had hoped. When tested, each of the sites could only see one other AREDN site, but the first site didn't see anything when we got it installed. The second site could see the one site that it saw before, but not very good. We have plans to set up a couple temporary nodes in the next week or two, to do some more testing. We won't have very many good weather days to work outside since winter is here. After I finished building the six new 2.4 GHz antennas, I ran them through the same tests as the first six. On the test bench they all seemed to be as good as the commercial antennas, but in the field they have a lot to be desired. I knew I was going to have to have my trucked serviced so I didn't want to go too far from home. When I get the truck back, I'm planning to make a trip to Ripley to work on the DAREN NODE/PBBS of JACKWV/RPLYWV. Just because I've been working on the AREDN system doesn't mean that I have forgot about the DAREN Packet Radio system. The DAREN system still has some advantages over the AREDN system, even though the DAREN system only operates at 1200 baud, and AREDN system, which I've seen operate as high as 36 Megabit. They are both needed for emergency communications. I would still like to see more DAREN stations come back on the air.
There were 33 check-ins to the State Wide DAREN Net this week again this week.
If you have any information that you would like to share with other Amateurs, please send it to me so I can put it in the DAREN News.