St. Louis County ARES® Minutes of the February 12, 2007 meeting

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Minutes of the February 12, 2007 Meeting

Steve Wooten, KC0QMU, the Emergency Coordinator presided over the monthly meeting of the St. Louis County ARES^® group on February 12, 2007. The Meeting was held at Old Bonhomme School.

Steve noted that the group currently had 64 members. He would like to recruit more. To that end, he would like to develop a PowerPoint presentation about ARES^® that can be shown to various amateur radio clubs in the area. He would like assistance in developing such a presentation. He also solicited ideas about what items could be placed at the ARES^® table at hamfests, handouts and other interesting things that could capture the attention of the attendees.

Steve discussed the possibility of permanently moving the monthly meetings to some place other than Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital. The Hospital books our meetings as secondary to in-house functions. That is, any last minute hospital meeting can bump our meetings. Old Bonhomme School can be used for some of the group's meetings, and other alternatives are being sought.

Several training issues were mentioned. First, the ARRL has opened registration for all three levels of the Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Course. Second, Art Goodall, KC0KNU (kc0knu@arrl.net) is looking for people for the District C Rapid Response Team (RRT). And third, St. Louis County SKYWARN classes start soon.

Steve talked about the group's on-air nets and procedures. First, the weekly voice net is now using a new format in order to comply with ARRL net guidelines. This should speed up the check-in process. Second, he asked that all participants please remain until the end of the net rather leaving the frequency immediately after checking in. The purpose of the net is to train for emergencies. If this were an actual emergency net, you would need to stay on the air until the net closed. Third, he noted that St. Louis County ARES^® had just completed its second digital workshop. He reminded everyone that the group has a digital net that takes place on Thursday nights at 7:30 PM on 145.085 MHz (FM simplex). Free digital mode software can be obtained from http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hteller/digipan/award.htm (Digipan) and http://www.qsl.net/kf6ypq/mmsstv.html (MMSSTV).

Steve said that St. Louis County ARES^® would like to hold four exercises in 2007. The general themes will be:

An exercise which participants can do from home.
Some sort of call-out exercise.
The yearly Simulated Emergency Test (SET).
A field station deployment and demonstration.

Steve said that the Veterans Administration Medical Center has obtained its amateur radio gear. Once warmer weather arrives the gear will be installed in the two hospitals (Cochran and Jefferson Barracks). The target date for the completion of these two installations is June 2007. Once these stations are up and running the remaining equipment will be installed in the three VAMC clinics.

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