Heard tell of a monthly net happening on the 3rd Tuesday of every month, 7pm, on the Moody repeater. That’s 146.62, negative offset, and no PL. Heard it’s a Bible net.
All posts by N4HEY
Some training links
I’ve assembled here information on some of the popular training courses, most online, for ham operators interested in emergency communications.
W4CUE/BARC 146.88 repeater back up at full power.
“The W4CUE – 146.880 MHz repeater in Birmingham is back up to the full coordinated power level. This comes after a repeater equipment failure and being forced to operate with a back up equipment for several weeks. The 88.5 Hz tone is again required on the input to active the repeater. Also, a tone of 88.5 Hz is on the output so that the users can set ‘Tone Squelch’ on their receiver if they would like.” — From BARC Facebook account.
ALABAMA 2016 SET
From ARRL Alabama Section Section Manager: JVann Martin Sr, W4JVM
Hello Alabama Section,
I hope this email finds everyone doing well.
ALABAMA 2016 SET is right around the corner so I wanted to send out information for everyone to start promoting on social media, Club meetings, Club websites, and on community news outlets. We need everyone involved so please begin talking this up, sharing the date and times with other amateur operators, and promoting this event with as many served agencies as you can in your districts, counties, and communities.
Although our ARRL scoring results have continued to grow and demonstrate teamwork across many of our counties, we still have a great opportunity to expand our participation into all counties in Alabama. I encourage our EC’s to not only reach out to your county served agencies and local hams, but also reach out to your neighboring counties that do not have an EC and ask those EMA’s, and other served agencies to please participate. If you would like some assistance with knowing what counties around your area do not have an EC, please contact me or your SEC, David Gillespie, W4LHQ.
dg**********@gm***.com
We understand that not all counties will be conducting your 2016 SET on OCT 14-16 as you may elect to hold your SET event before or after those dates. Please send in your reports to your SEC David Gillespie, W4LHQ at
dg**********@gm***.com
once you have tabulated your traffic and scores.
This year’s SET will be divided into small segments of time so that we maximize our ability to get as many hams and served agencies involved. We have met with the NWS representatives and they have asked that we partner with all three NWS offices that support the State of Alabama during our SET. This means that each NWS would like for those counties supported by the area NWS to please involve as many of your county EMA’s as possible so that we get them on the air during the SET activities. We are excited that the NWS sees the value in working with Amateur Radio and sees the value in having us involved in our local
served agencies.
To better our chances of getting as many of the county EMA’s to participate during SET check ins, we will start the Alabama 2016 SET at 1500 hours on Friday afternoon in hopes of collecting that traffic at our EMA’s and other served agencies that are normally closed on Saturdays.
SET OPERATING TIMES ARE LISTED BELOW SO PLEASE HELP US GET THE WORD OUT.
We will send more details to all EC’s and DEC’s soon about the type of event and details about what will take place during the exercise.
I also want to encourage each county to participate in all modes of communication including standing up HF nets, 2m/440 nets, Digital nets and other Digital modes of collecting traffic. During a real disaster, we may not have the ability to utilize all of these types of COMM, but during an exercise, this is how we test, plan, and then test again our equipment, our reach, and our ability to work together with lots of people at one time.
Please share parts of all of this communication with your clubs and on social media outlets.
I want to personally thank each of you for your hard work and willingness to make our state a stronger partner with other served agencies by maximizing our skill and education through effective use of Amateur Radio.
ALABAMA ARES 2016 SET PARTICIPATION TIMES INCLUDE:
October 14 Friday 15:00 to 17:00 NCS initial call out to county EMA
officials.
October 15 Saturday 08:00 to noon traditional SET for operators, Served
agencies, etc.
October 16 Sunday 20:00 Simplex Net with check ins per SET protocol
73,
——————————
ARRL Alabama Section
Section Manager: JVann Martin Sr, W4JVM
Helena Hamfest: Saturday, October 8, 2016
The sixth annual Helena Hamfest is fast approaching!
The event will be held on Saturday, October 8, 2016, from 9:00am to 1:00pm at the Helena Amphitheater in beautiful Helena, AL.
We’ll have VE testing, tons of tailgaiters with tons of equipment for sale, and are expecting some great vendors.
Tables will be $10.00 each. Vendors or tailgaiters can bring their own tables if they wish. In that case, the only charge is the price of admission!
Admission: $5 per licensed ham
For more information, see http://helenahamfest.com/
Dale
N4HEY
Tour de Cure is done!
I just participated in my first bike race. I mean, as a ham operator!
I went into this with no real concept of what goes on. Whoa. What an operation. There’s a zillion things to go wrong, so anything less than a zillion things going wrong is pretty amazing.
I was out at Rest Stop 5 which is just west of Atlanta. Ok, not really. It’s 45 miles or so east of Railroad Park. Which brings me to the most shocking piece of the experience. Our rest stop only saw the dozen-or-so 100 milers. That race started at 0730 from Railroad Park. I kind of figured we would see our first riders, being 45 miles from the start, no earlier than 11. Imagine our surprise when our first 3 riders arrived at 0930! In fact, we had JUST finished getting set up when they rolled in. Speaking as an out-of-shape fat guy, I can tell you that these guys looked positively refreshed and appeared to barely have broken a sweat. I’m not jealous.
What I really want to say as a newbie is how impressed I was by the process on the ham radio side of things. Net Control (mostly helmed by the mighty Carl, WW4CC) was terrific. Logistics was great. The team of ADA volunteers at our station were fabulous. Just a great experience, at least for those of us sitting at a fairly easy-to-do, low traffic station!
ARECA offering Ham Cram on August 13, 2016!
ARECA, the Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Association is offering a Ham Cram on Saturday, August 13th, 2016, 8AM-3PM at the Ashville City Hall / Municipal Bldg., 211 8th St, Ashville, AL 35953.
The Ham Cram is an instructional class that teaches the information needed to pass the Technician level class of the license exam.
Snacks will be provided as we will have a “working lunch.” If you have special dietary needs, please consider bringing your own special food items.
And, they’re going to give away a Baofeng dual-band handheld radio.
Bring $10 as a testing fee. Testing for General and Extra will be available for $10.
Please RSVP at
in**@ar******.org
.
Alabama Section assignments
From our new Section Manager, JVann Martin:
Please pass the word about Alabama Section assignments.
You can also visit the ARES website as I plan on utilizing our websites and social media to push information out to everyone.
http://www.alabama-ares.org
At the above website, you can also see two new DEC’s that have been announced for Districts E and G and the new EC for Jefferson Co.
I appreciate these leaders stepping up to the challenge to help lead Alabama Section.
Section Manager
Jvann Martin, W4JVM
w4***@ar**.org
Assistant Section Manager
Hub Harvey, N4HUB
Emergency Management
n4***@ar**.net
Assistant Section Manager
Roger Parsons, KK4UDU
Ro*************@JC*.com
Section Emergency Coordinator
David Gillespie, W4LHQ
W4***@ar**.net
New repeater database for ya.
Here’s our latest repeater database. 2-meter, 220, 440, and NOAA radio frequencies. Note the tabs (sheets) at the bottom. You can open this in Excel, in Google Sheets, etc. Download here.
ARRL Repeater Directory 2016-2017
Just got this. Gotta say: I’m not crazy about it.
Let’s get this out of the way–the darn thing is flimsy. The paper is not quite as thin as a King James Bible, but pretty close. Worse, the cover is glossy, but the stock is thin. These aren’t quibbles. It just doesn’t seem durable.
But here’s the big change. In previous editions, repeaters were listed separately in sections for 2-meter, 440, 220, etc. Now they have ALL repeaters listed by state and then city. So, if you look at Birmingham, for example, ALL the repeaters, 2-meters, 440, etc., are listed together. It’s visually confusing. Or at least to me. Granted, the number of things that I find confusing is increasing.