DAREN of WV News December 27, 2021(E86)
(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 hope every one had a Very Merry and safe Christmas. I hope everyone has a Happy and safe New Year.
I received an E-Mail from Gene Roy, N8ER, on Tuesday, the 22nd. Gene wanted me to know the Randolph County NODE/PBBS of RANDWV/ELKNWV was out of service. He said that it would be a few days before Zane Hammack, WV8ZH, could make it to the top of the mountain to get it repaired. With the snow that we received Christmas Eve/Christmas Day, it may take even longer before Zane would make it to the mountain. Losing the Randolph County node is a great loss to the DAREN system. At one time losing one station wasn't too bad because you might be able to work around it and stay in the DAREN system, but the loss of so many nodes in the last few years has crippled the system pretty bad. I can't say too much about losing stations since I have a few that I need to get back on the air.
On Wednesday Joe Thomas, N8MEV, and I installed another Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network (AREDN) 2.4 GHz HSMM (High Speed MultiMedia) node. It was placed at the same tower site as one of the other ones, except it was placed at 80 feet. The first node was placed on a 10 foot piece of pipe, on the top of a 20 foot tower. The new one was placed on the side of the 300 foot. We were hoping to see a big difference with the new one, but were let down when we started doing some testing. The 80 foot node signals are being blocked by the tower, so the signals in that direction are a lot less. Both the 80 foot and 30 foot nodes have just about the same signal level to the one station that is needing a better signal. We have some strange problems with some of the nodes. They will quit receiving signals, but they do keep transmitting. We have found that if we power the units down for a few seconds, they will come back alive. That happened with the new node placed at 80 feet. The day after we installed it, it quit receiving. On Christmas day it came back up and started working again. The one at 30 foot has quit receiving three times. Two times we powered it down and it came back up. The third time it came back up by itself. On Christmas Day both the 80 foot and the 30 foot stations went down, but the 30 foot station came back up. Yesterday, one of the stations at my house went down, and is still down. Since I have a second node at my house I'm going to wait and see if the first one comes back up on its own. We are searching the internet to see if anyone else has the same problem. Since this system is new to all of us, we are still learning. A couple of the guys are working on a way to turn to power off, and back on remotely.
Due to the lose of the Randolph County NODE/PBBS, there were only 24 check-ins to the State Wide DAREN Net this week. Randy Thomas, K8KHW, needs one more check-in to make 800.