August is the last full month of summer and what a summer it has been with very hot temperatures and torrential rains. There was one hundred and twenty nine hours devoted to Skywarn® reporting in August in support of the active weather. In St. Charles Co. we had 13″ of rain in a little over 12 hours. Flash flooding was the result of the excessive rainfall and many homes and businesses were flooded. No emergency communications were requested anywhere in the state that I am aware of from the month’s severe weather.
I have to report that Tom Simmons, N0CSA has resigned as DEC for District D. I thank Tom for his support of ARES® and serving as DEC . ECs in District D will be receiving report forms directly from me until a replacement is found for the DEC position. Again, thank you, Tom, for your support.
October is fast approaching and that means Simulated Emergency Test time. I hope many of you participate in your local SET exercises. It’s a good test of your communications equipment and your personal skills.
District News:
District A: Richard Fretwell, W0KRF, DEC
Benton County:
- BC ARES Members participated in the following nets: MTN, MESN, ARES, Region A Healthcare, and various club nets. KR1STL ran the Region A Healthcare Net in August with KE0AVT as back up operator. There were 21 check ins with 10 being from Healthcare facilities.
Clay/Platte Counties:
- Northland ARES – August exercise “Crossband communications” Three stations were in use to provide connections to Northland repeaters. Members divided into teams to configure Hand Held units to interact with each system. Three net operations allowed operators confirm the use of Cross Band features.
- Northland ARES Digital Training Net – The FLarq program, Fast Light Automatic Repeat reQuest is a file transfer application that is based on the ARQ specification developed by Paul Schmidt, K9PS.
- flmsg-ARQ transfers – Flmsg includes a unique Automatic Repeat reQuest, flmsg-ARQ, transfer system. It is similar to, but not compatible with the flarq ARQ implementation. The training required stations to operate in Simplex mode due to the structure of ARQ. Stations were able to handle ICS forms on Simplex within a 45 mile radius in the Northland. NL ARES net operates Sunday 8:00 PM 147.330 (151.4) New operators are welcomed.
- “MODES” “Missouri Digital Emergency Service” – MODES 3.985 MHz Thursday 10:00 am CST. FOUR sessions QNI 62 QTC 8 28 hours. ZOOM Mtg for Technical Discussion. NCS utilizes FSQcall triggers to expedite responses from participating
stations. Additional “MODES” info at https://modes.groups.io/g/main/topics FLdigi-FSQ or FSQcall for net interaction. New members are welcome.
NCS KA0OTL Jeff, Net mgr.
District F: J.D. Simmons, WA0BER, DEC
- Began collaboration with EMDs on Joint Boone-Cole counties SET in November. Additional counties within District F and District B may be included.
District H:
- Livingston Co.: Practiced audio-coupling for NBEMS using FM MT63
The following are the stats for the month of August:
Thanks for your support and the volunteer hours contributed to the ARES mission.
73,
Jeff Young KB3HF
Missouri Section EC