DAREN of WV News June 27, 2021(F12)
(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.
Well, Field Day is over for another year, but that doesn't mean everything is complete. Now all of the contact information, bonus points, and other information needs to be compiled and sent to the ARRL. Did you learn anything while you were participating in Field Day? If you didn't, then your Field Day was a failure. I have never seen any activity go by that I didn't learn something. This year we had enough solar panels that we were able to produce up to 40 Amps of current. Each of our operating positions had enough batteries to last through the night. All of our transceivers operated on solar and battery power the whole 24 hours. The only thing the generator was used for was the lights, computers, and any cooling and cooking that was needed. We are going to try to operate the computers next year from the solar power. We could have tried it this year, but we didn't want to take a chance until we could see how much power we had. All of the computers have converters that change 12 volts to 19 volts. We've been using the computers on 12 volts for a few years now, and they work just fine. You can buy the little 8 Amp Buck Converters for about $6, and they work great. We also need to correct any problems that we ran into so we won't have the same thing next year.
Before we started Field Day Saturday at 2:00 pm, we had to provide Safety and Race Communications in the morning for a Chic-Fil-A Road run starting a 8:00 am. We had at least 14 Amateurs helping with the race, which lasted until about 11:00 am. Now that Field Day is over, and our next major event won't be until August 20th and 21st, maybe I can get back to working on Certificates for the State Wide DAREN Net that I keep falling behind on, and getting the grass and brush cleaned up around the house. I did have a little bad luck last week, when the engine on my riding mower decided to fly apart. Now I need to figure out how I'm going to get the grass cut.
There were 39 check-ins to the State Wide DAREN Net this week. Julie Hartley, KB8SYE, who has been participating in the net since January 21, 1995, has completed 400, and will be receiving her certificate. There were three new calls on the net this week. As usual there are Amateurs who get introduced to Packet Radio, and the DAREN system, on Field Day, which I love to see. Maybe we can get them hooked on Packet. Those stations were; Brian Boyles, KE8LGO, from Belington, Perry Lantz, AD8DA, from Philippi, and one I couldn't find any record of, KE8LX. From the research I've done, it could be KE8LXN, KE8LXO, KE8LXP, or KE8LXQ. If you know who it may have been, let me know so they can get credit for checking into the net. Thanks