St. Mary's County, MD - ARES

Hams with a plan...

Tag: Drill

October Simulated Emergency Test (SET)

August 22, 2023 /

Preparations are underway for our participation in the October 2023 SET.

Our draft plan so far:

  • We will establish a Net on the 147.390 repeater when called to activate.
  • We will have three (3) teams deploy to locations within St Mary’s County to verify the location of designated Geodetic Markers
    • Team 1 – North end of the county (Charlotte Hall/Mechanicsville/Sotterly)
    • Team 2 – Central area of the county (Leonardtown/Hollywood/California)
    • Team 3 – South end of the county (Lexington Park/Ridge/Point Lookout)
  • Each Team will have an APRS equipped vehicle beaconing their location as they deploy
  • Upon locating each marker, each team will compose and send to Net Control a ARRL Radiogram via voice stating verification & condition of marker
  • Net Control will gather all the reports and generate an ICS-213 (General Message) form in WINLINK Express summarizing the status of all markers
  • Net Control will transmit via WINLINK (ARDOP on HF) to a relay station in Charles County who will forward on to the Section Emergency Coordinator

We still need to identify the specific markers to be going after and we need to do some experimenting with a relay station in Charles County, but I think this is a solid plan and exercises all the techniques we have been practicing.

After Action Report – April 29th Drill Net

April 30, 2023 /

At 0900L on 29 April 2023, a Net was started by KB2SKP acting as NCS for the purpose of practicing the passing of messages using the ARRL Radiogram format and NTS best practices. KB1YZ, KC3RWE, AC3CU, W3OST, N3AK, AC3FE each generated, passed, and received one message via voice. Three messages (from AC3CU, KB1YZ, and KC3RWE) were also sent via WINLINK to the tactical callsign STMAEC.

The following questions were brought up:

  • Does the ‘X-Ray’ in the text count in the CHECK?
    • Yes it does
  • What should the sending station say when complete with a section?
    • For our purposes we will use the word ‘OVER’
  • Where should we write the SIGNATURE?
    • There is not a ‘box’ for the SIG so it should be written under the body of the message and above the “Recv’d” box.
  • Is it necessary to say the box title for the boxes in the Preamble?
    • No it is not; enough of a pause should be employed by the sender and the actual entry or value should be enough so as to make it clear which block is being populated. However if there is doubt on the part of the receiver or the sender is more comfortable saying them it is permissible.
  • How do you include a decimal point such as 1.5″ of rain reported?
    • The decimal point is said as “decimal” and written as a capital ‘R’ on the Radiogram form. For the rain report above it would be:
      • Spoken: Figures One Decimal Fiver Inches Of Rain
      • Written: 1R5 Inches Of Rain

Overall the exercise went very well and the net was closed at 1016L.

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