ARES Simulated Emergency Test – 05 Oct 2013

Look out, here comes “Chessie”!

This year’s statewide Simulated Emergency Test (SET) will be held next Saturday, Oct. 5th, from noon until about 1330.

Hurricane “Chessie” will be tracking through the region with hurricane force winds, widespread power outages, and heavy rain. All radio operators in Frederick County will be asked to provide reports on the probable conditions that might occur in their neighborhoods. These reports might include power outages, wind damage (trees down, roofs off, possible tornadoes, etc.), flooding of nearby creeks and streams with roads impassable, etc.

We will begin the scenario using the FARG 146.730 repeater, but will switch to 146.580 simplex later in the exercise as the repeater antenna is knocked down and some report relays will probably be needed. In a normal Skywarn activation we would be using the MADXRA 147.060 in stand-alone mode, but this machine will be used to relay messages from Western Maryland via the Target system.

Emergency power is encouraged and this is a great opportunity to test your systems. If you have a Skywarn spotter number, let us know, but this and/or ARES membership is not a requirement to participate. Put the word out to your ham buddies who might not otherwise hear about this and copy this message to other local reflectors.

Disasters don’t discriminate – all hams are welcome. The net will begin at 1200 on 146.730 operating from the K3ERM ARES station at Red Cross in Walkersville.

Let’s have some fun with this!

73,

Jeff Fishman KB3FIO Fred. ARES Emergency Coordinator

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Skywarn Picnic @ NWS Sterling LWX

Hello all,

Just a reminder that the annual Skywarn picnic will be in the early afternoon tomorrow (Saturday) starting at Noon.  The quarterly SKYWARN meeting will be at 11am just before the picnic.  The plan is for the rain to hold off until later in the day, so I think we’ll be all right.

If you want to bring a food item, feel free – it’s potluck. I’ll bring the grill stuff, some drinks, and a few extra things.

Chris Strong
NWS

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Sorry for the late update, but this will be held at the NWS Sterling Office. Which is located just west of the North end of Dulles International Airport located a little off Virginia Route 606

 

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Skywarn Training Classes

After a hiatus of almost a year the Baltimore/Washington National Weather Service office has announced two Skywarn Basics I classes for September.  On Monday September 16th at 7:00 P.M. a class will be held in Towson, MD.  On Wednesday September 25th a class will be held in Washington D.C.  As always with Skywarn classes offered through the Baltimore/Washington office the classes are free and open to the public, and preregistration is required.  Additional details on the classes are available at http://www.erh.noaa.gov/lwx/skywarn/classes.html.  Feel free to use the comments section of this post to arrange car pools to either of the training classes.

For those not familiar with Skywarn it is a program that allows the general public to supplement the radar and other remote observations the weather service collects with on the ground reports during times of severe weather.  In the Baltimore/Washington region there is active HAM participation in the Skywarn program, with the primary repeater being the 147.300 Bluemont, VA repeater, and a number of additional local repeaters designated for regional subnets.  There have been several occasions over the past six months when the National Weather Service activated Skywarn and was actively soliciting reports of local conditions during severe thunderstorms.  While any member of the public can become a Skywarn spotter volunteer amateur radio operators are especially valuable as they are able to transmit real time reports to the National Weather Service even when phone lines and cell phone systems are down or overloaded.  More information on HAM participation in Skywarn can be found at http://www.wx4lwx.org/index.php.

While the National Weather Service will generally accept reports from any member of the public those from trained and registered Skywarn volunteers (also known as spotters) are given additional weight.  One example of this is that the weather service will not generally speaking issue a tornado warning based on a sighting of a funnel cloud unless the report comes from someone who is trained in recognizing severe weather which includes trained and registered Skywarn volunteers as well as certain officials with local emergency management agencies (the National Weather Service may also issue a warning based on radar indications without a local report).

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A.R.E.S Coverage of Gran Fondo National

Frederick ARES has been asked to provide communications support for the Gran Fondo National Championship Bike Race to be held on Sunday, Sept. 22nd, from 0800 to 1600. This is a 100 mile event that winds through Frederick County, and we will need to man 4 checkpoints and 2 SAG vehicles using one of the local 2M repeaters.

For more info, go to: www.gfncs.com

If you would like to participate for a few hours that Sunday, please send me an email.

As always, ARES membership is not required to volunteer. More details to follow after Labor Day.

Thanks.

73,

Jeff Fishman KB3FIO

Fred. ARES Emergency Coordinator

ljfish1@comcast.net

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