March sure has had its up and downs with cold & warm weather, tornadoes, flooding, and torential rains. The Section had 51 Skywarn Ops to monitor the severe weather this month. We are approaching the peak of the spring severe weather in April and May, so make sure you have a plan in case of emergency and keep a weather radio on at all times.
District News & Comments:
District A: Richard Fretwell, W0KRF, DEC
- Benton Co. – BC ARES Members participated in the following nets: MTN, MESN, ARES, Region A Healthcare, and various club nets. Members of the BC ARES attended a weather spotters class held at the Warsaw Fire Department Training Center.
- Cass Co. – Attended the Cass county emergency management meeting. Attended the Raymore emergency management meeting. March meeting presentation on tak, oscilloscope and signal processor and future projects. April meeting with be a presentation on repeater cavity tuning and equipment. A new bushmaster 7 band dipole installed at the ec qtc. A new frequency table for Cass county distributed showing the new gmrs repeater and training/recruitment for this repeater is activity being pursued. ARDEN setup is ongoing with a new 5.8ghz parabolic dish being installed. Mestastatic equipment is being utilized for connection to Raymore/Belton members.
- Clay/Platte Cos. – March 2025 NL ARES monthly meeting activity: Members were divided into teams. The host provided a list of scenarios to chose from. The teams then proceeded to develop a plan to resolve the selected scenario. Each team then presented their plan to the group and discussed the steps taken to resolve the event scenario. The group shared additional information during the AAR discussions. Thanks to our Host Keith WA0TJT and to the members for an interesting meeting.
- Johnson Co. – Members had display at the 2025 Mid MO Homestead Expo
District B: Don Vary, KD0HHN, DEC
- Adair Co. – Did repeater work, antenna changes, improved repeater coverage.
- Macon Co. – Held spotter/storm chaser presentation by Joe Dietrick KC0NOX.
- Marion Co.- Doing simplex net after regular ARES net on 146.570, good turnout. Looks like it could be a busy year
District C: Bill Grimsbo, N0PNP, DEC
- St. Charles Co. – Conducted combined Severe Weather drill with Jefferson County EOC to coincide with Statewide Tornado Drill on 3/5/25. Continued development of joint Simulated Earthquake exercise with Jefferson County EOC to test our deployment readiness that was to take place 4/1/25 but had to be postponed due to EOC being inundated with recovery activities from 2 tornados that struck the County on 3/14/25. On 3/14/25 we had a major storn event roll through the County producing 2 tornado touch-down leaving parts of the County with significant damages & power outages. We had 20 operators throughout the County providing us with updates. The weather net lasted about 4 hours with the Net Control operator providing weather updates prior to the storm’s arrival.
- St. Louis Metro: – Weekly Winlink training exercise. Steven Wooten
- Warren Co. – 4 sessions/20 checkins/3.5hrs/no radio traffic Luther Oswalt
District G: Harold Hoffman, KA0SAB, DEC
- We are gaining new ARES members in Ozark county and West plains is getting members back and hope to have them here soon.
MESN: Monthly net report for March 2025. Sessions – 5 / QNI – 166 / QTC – 5. KF4MXF Linda Lathrop NC
Below are the statistics for the month of March with 43 out of 59 counties groups reporting:
73,
Jeff KB3HF
Missouri SEC