Mini-Tips – Part 3 July 12, 2006

Bob Kenyon – K8LJ

Time to check your go-bag (kit)

Just as the arrival of Daylight Savings Time is a reminder to check the batteries in your smoke detector, the arrival of Field Day should remind you to go through your go-bag and check the perishables. Don't stop with the food and water. Remember the toothpaste, anti-perspirant, medicines, and anything else that might dry out or go bad. While you're at it, check the batteries stored in your bag. From Gary Hoffman, KB0H

Wilderness Protocol

The Wilderness Protocol was developed to facilitate communications between hams while hiking or backpacking, but has since become useful anywhere that repeater coverage is sparse. From 7 AM local time to 10 PM, amateur radio operators in such areas are asked to monitor the simplex calling channel 146.52 MHz for five minutes every hour. Monitoring times would be from 7:00 to 7:05, 8:00 to 8:05, and so forth until 10:05 PM. Using this protocol, hams wishing or needing to make contact know which times they are most likely to receive a response. In addition to the primary frequency of 146.52 MHz, the secondary frequencies of 52.525 MHz, 223.5 MHz, 446.0 MHz, and 1294.5 MHz may be monitored. From KB0H

Check that emergency gear

One problem almost every emergency communications operator encounters is finding that some part of his/her gear doesn't work. It usually happens at the worst possible time. It may be dead batteries, a non-functional piece of equipment, consumables that have gone bad, or just something that didn't work quite the way the operator thought it should. Pick a date and mark it on your calendar. The weekend before Field Day or before the yearly Simulated Emergency Test would be good. Go through your emergency gear AND your regular equipment and make sure that everything is up to date and works. From KB0H

Why exercises are important

Every exercise that we hold exposes new flaws in plans, preparations, and readiness. So why hold them at all? Well, the first reason is to find and correct those flaws. They can never be entirely eliminated, but the more of them that we identify and correct ahead of time, the fewer we will have to worry about when disaster strikes. The second reason is to acclimate the emergency communications operators to the unexpected. Operators who have participated in many exercises become accustomed to failures and surprises. They tend to adapt to the unexpected more quickly and are less likely to panic than operators who have never participated in exercises. From KB0H

Accuracy is crucial

Richard Palm, K1CE, is the editor of the ARES E-Letter. He recently wrote: "A few weeks ago, I handled a radiogram on one of the local VHF nets routed via a major HF net in the Northern Florida section. The message had a simple preamble, address, text, and signature, and yet it was garbled significantly from the original. If there is one thing that we must do right (as) ARES operators, it is to send a message accurately. It is more important than timeliness, or any other feature of message-handling. Take the time to send it right. We hang our hats on that."

Take care of yourself

The ARECC Level I manual says that your personal safety comes ahead of the mission. Don't put yourself at risk. You cannot help the emergency relief efforts if you allow yourself to become sick or injured.

No Q-signals, please

Q-signals are very useful if you are sending Morse code, but often lead to confusion when used verbally. The idea that "everyone knows" certain Q-signals is a fallacy. Do not use them on voice channels during emergency communications. From ARECC Level I course book

Organization is vital

Picture a random group of volunteers trying to handle a communications emergency. They don't know each other, have different ideas about what should be done, and half of them want to be in charge. The result is chaos. This is why training alone is not enough. There has to be an organized structure from which to work. That is the purpose of ARES. From ARECC Level I course book