An Important Message from the
Emergency Coordinator

With the new ARRL ARES strategic plan now in place, specific training and basic participation is now a requirement to be a volunteer in ARES.

All three levels of membership have their training requirements listed in the ARRL ARES Task Book.

TRAINING:
Participants shall have completed the following courses: ARRL's EC-001 Introduction to Amateur Radio Emergency Communications (now a no-cost on-line class through the ARRL) and FEMA IS-100, IS-200, IS-700, and IS-800. You have a year to complete all the above training.

PARTICIPATION for Active Status with St. Louis Metro ARES:

• Attend 4 Monthly Meetings. Attending the monthly meetings you get to see other volunteers and discuss issues. You can hear presentations by other ARES volunteers that may be relevant to ARES operations. Attend one Planning meeting so you give your ideas for exercises, presentations and other items related to ARES operations.
• Check into the St. Louis Metro ARES Voice net and the St. Louis Metro ARES Practice Traffic net at least once a month.
• Digitally equipped with Winlink. A basic Winlink training class will be given once a year to help obtain this. Check the ARES calendar of events for the official date of this class.
• Participate in an exercise, and participate in our Simulated Emergency Test. Participating in our exercises and our SET will give you an idea on how we will respond when call out. Attend our Field Day event at JB park and help operate a station

If you are unable to participate in some of these activities, please contact me.

Steven J Wooten KC0QMU
Emergency Coordinator for
St. Louis Metro ARES & RACES
Assistant District EC for HARN

New Digital Operations Manual

Click here to see the St. Louis Metro ARES Digital Operations Manual, updated for 2020.

St. Louis Metro ARES^®
Simplex Exercise Simulating an Emergency Call-Out
Saturday February 29, 2019
Starts between 9:00 AM and 9:05 AM

All licensed Amateur Radio operators are invited to participate!

When the communications infrastructure comes crashing down, our Amateur Radio repeaters might not be immune to the disaster. This exercise will test our ability to organize and bring up simplex nets in each of our four operating zones. There will be no announcement on any repeater, and each zone will operate independently. The purpose of these nets will be to find out who and what Amateur Radio resources are available should our served agencies request a deployment. This is a simulation only, and we will not actually deploy. Despite that, please give an accurate response to the net control operator's questions.

This is a "trial run" of our simplex resources net procedures, and as such things may not go smoothly. Please be patient, do the best you can, and be sure to address your thoughts and comments to the exercise director (listed below). There will be more such exercises as we learn and improve the protocols.

The exercise will have an optional component at the very end involving an ARRL Radiogram. While you do not have to participate in this part of the exercise, we urge you to do so.

Important! If you plan to participate, please print out and read the Exercise Directions.

Contact Gary Hoffman, KB0H if you have questions.