St. Louis County ARES^® held a simplex zone exercise on March 29, 2008. Click here to see the explanation and instructions for the exercise.

The exercise debriefing was held on April 5, 2008. The debriefing was chaired by Steve Wooten, KC0QMU, the Emergency Coordinator, and attended by eleven other people who participated in the exercise.

Steve said that 25 people participated in the exercise, and that four of them managed to make contact with all four zone net controllers. He believes that the 3 Zone Model was the most effective.

Exercise Director:
Craig Klimczak, K4LSU, was the Exercise Director. He ran the exercise from the 146.850 (W0SRC) repeater.

He said that he started out on the wrong frequency but managed to get back on track by the time the exercise began at 1:00 PM. He said that all of the simplex nets were in operation by that time. He suggested that in future simplex exercises perhaps everyone should first check-in on the repeater.

He noted again that it was virtually impossible to listen to two radios at the same time and reiterated that there should be an operator for each radio.

He said that it was lonely on the repeater. No one called to report a failure to make contact on a simplex net.

He felt that the exercise went well. He feels that we still need to standardize signal reports. He noted that in the 2 Zone Model, he was located in the North Zone but could actually reach the South Zone easier. He felt that we need to work on the zone boundaries.

East Zone:
Steve Schmitz, W0SJS, was the Net Controller for the East Zone simplex net. Steve Schmitz could not attend the debriefing, but did send the following notes to Steve Wooten.

He lamented that he had a less than optimal antenna to work simplex. He said that he was contacted by 5 people, 4 of whom were in his zone. He suggested that St. Louis County ARES^® perform simplex tests quarterly to get a feel for the variations caused by different temperatures and humidities, foliage, effects of field stations working on asphalt, concrete, and natural surfaces, different times of day and so forth.

West Zone:
Cliff Rozar, KC0SDV, was the Net Controller for the West Zone simplex net. Cliff said that he was located on the east side of a ridge and that had a significant effect on his ability to get or send signals to the west. He used two stacked Arrow beam antannas. Cliff listed 7 contacts,

South Zone:
Chuck Wehking, N0EIS, was the Net Controller for the South Zone simplex net. He said that there is a lot of RF soup in south county. He said that the next time he works an exercise down there he will use a pre-amp to increase the selectivity.

Chuck noted that a number of the participants were using reduced power levels.

Chuck and Mark Wehking, KC0ZFT, worked together with two radios. Mark believed that he and Chuck would have interacted more smoothly had they been across the table from each other rather than side-by-side. Mark also noted that the Chesterfield Valley tended to be a radio dead zone.

North Zone:
Gary Hoffman, KB0H, was the Net Controller for the North Zone simplex net. He said that he'd had two radios running, but had Nancy Hoffman, N0NJ, manning the second one. He said that having the extra operator helped immensely.

Gary said that he could not judge which zone model was most effective. He said that although he eventually had ten contacts, several of them were relays and his main contacts were all clustered in one spot in north county. Eric, N0UIH, was in a much better location and reached not just north county but much of the entire county. Steve noted that there are no ARES^® members south of I-270 but north of I-70.

Although he didn't know if we had reached the goal of determining the best zone model, Gary said that the exercise went fine technically. He said that running five simultaneous nets was no small feat.

Gary said that there were small issues with a few people forgetting that these were directed nets, and some operators losing site of the goals and just attempting to make as many contacts as possible.

Gary relayed a short report from his partner Nancy. Nancy found the exercise interesting and exciting. She felt that the two-man North Zone station worked well and that the proximity of two transceivers posed no problems. She felt that the Exercise Director did a good job. Her only complaint was about the particular transceiver she was using, which tended to 'spit' after each transmission.

Jefferson Barracks Hospital:
St. Louis County ARES^® has an arrangement with the St. Louis Veterans Administration Medical Center. At the time of the exercise there was one functioning VAMC amateur radio station, which was located at Jefferson Barracks VA Hospital. VA employee Paul Sherman, KD0CIW, who is also an ARES^® member, manned the JB Hospital amateur radio station during the exercise. Paul could not attend the debriefing but did inform Steve that he heard ten different call signs during the exercise.

Other reports:
Eric Bueneman, N0UIH, used a Diamond beam antenna. Eric reached vritually everyone in the exercise. He was located on a hill not far from Interstate 270 and Lindbergh Blvd in Hazelwood. He said that he uses RG-8 for everything.

Eric advocated using a Yaesu FT-2800M for field work. He also would like to see a repeat of the "You write the messages" exercise, as he felt we are losing our message handling skills. He believed that the group could gain valuable experience working a contest. For field deployments, he thought it would be a good idea to carry multiple masts rather than a single mast. He also thought it'd be a good idea to carry extra RG-8 coaxial cable in your vehicle.

Craig Hirsh, K0CMH, said that sometimes UHF works better, as it scatters around and can often circumvent objects that block 2 meter signals. He also noted that in the zones that we used, the eastern tips all virtually merged at their eastern ends. And finally, he repeated that there should be one operator for each radio in operation.

Paul Hinrichs, K0TPY, suggested that we plot the high spots and other barriers that we encounter in the county. He felt that 25 participants was pretty good. He said that everyone acted well on the air. He said that he preferred the 4 zone model, as it would be the easiest model to use in a sudden emergency. After we get organized we could always revert to a 3 zone or 2 zone model. He said that this exercise had been a good beginning, but that it should be repeated and refined. Paul said that he used his minimum configuration emergency equipment rather than his base equipment just to emulate a disaster situation.

Julie Bernstein, KC0TMD, suggested using 10 meter single-side band.

Harry Ferris, K0QS, liked Paul's idea of using emergency equipment during exercises. He suggested that we develop a checklist of what information we want from each operator and distribute it before each exercise.

Scott Cullen, N9JIJ, felt that it was a well-handled, gentlemanly exercise.

© 2010 St. Louis County ARES^®

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