In keeping with ARRL policy of the past, St. Louis County ARES^® had neither encouraged nor discouraged the wearing of ARES^® caps, vests, jackets and such. The League, however, recently decided that ARES^® members on deployment and at public service events should be more visible. They have set specific standards for vests and jackets. More information and an example can be found at http://www.arrl.org/pio/contact/2010/02/.

None of the regular clothing suppliers has a "ready made" version of these ARES^® items yet. We will keep you informed of any change.

St. Louis County ARES^® is preparing an initial "Call Out" list. This will be used to notify team members that they are needed when emergencies arise. It will work like a "phone tree", with the Emergency Coordinator notifying people at the top of the list, each of those people notifying several more, and so forth. The Call Out list will also be used to remind team members of upcoming ARES^® events and perhaps even the weekly nets. This will be done to insure that the list is up to date and works properly, and to acclimate team members to being contacted.

We are making participation in this Call Out list voluntary to insure that everyone contacted truly wants to be, and is ready and prepared to perform emergency services. If you are ready to make this commitment, contact me, Steve, the Emergency Coordinator, at kc0qmu@arrl.net. Be sure that I have at least one reliable way to reach you during a call out.

Thank you all again for your commitment & support to ARES^®.

Steve Wooten KC0QMU
Emergency Coordinator
St. Louis County ARES^®

Click on the "Operations" button to the left. When the Operations page appears, click on the "Voice Net Operations" button.

Or, just click here to go directly to Voice Net Operations.

You may have noticed that the bottom-most three buttons in the Team Members sub-menu require a user ID and password to access. They don't hide anything sinister. This is a description of what they mean.

This section is under construction. Eventually ARES^® members who have committed to responding to deployments will be able to access this section to obtain operating frequencies and such.

The Emergency Coordinator has a team of planners and advisors called the "Planning Committee". (Membership is open. See About the Planning Committee and Members of the Planning Committee for additional information.) The Planning Committee has a secure page where its members can post new ideas and discuss old ones. The information is not particularly sensitive, but it was felt that it was best to keep the discussions off of the main Web pages since many of the ideas are rejected or go through many revisions before being implemented.

The Emergency Coordinator keeps some of the St. Louis County ARES^® administrative files online so that he may access them quickly no matter where he is. This section contains storage space for these files.

• The Training Main Page lists training opportunities. While no course is mandatory, we consider it the duty of every ARES^® Team Member to continuously improve his/her knowledge base. We will offer courses when we can, but you should seek out and take advantages of training opportunities on your own. You will have to be reasonably self-sufficient during a disaster, so consider self-teaching early practice.