| Description: |
From Steve Uhrig, WA3SWS:
Sincere thanks to everyone who assisted in the mutual aid ARES exercise today. Everything I have heard from any source was complimentary.
In Harford, every piece of traffic which was issued was relayed and received at its intended destination. Every post was able to communicate although not immediately. But using your amateur skills, everyone was able to get on the air, and the posts deliberately were chosen to be difficult.
The objectives for today's drill were:
1) Learn to operate with other ARES units who have different names and calls than we are used to and probably small differences in their operating procedures. Learn and practice the concept of mutual aid
2) Learn not to rely on repeaters. Most repeaters wouldn't last long if at all absent commercial power, which in our scenario was turned off as a protective measure as soon as the utilities learned high water conditions were coming. Learn to work simplex, under real world field conditions, from low lying posts -- the most difficult imaginable. Our posts literally were extracted from Harford County's emergency management plan and were posts which we would be requested to man if high water was expected. With the eastern side of our county being at sea level, this made for some difficult simplex conditions. We learned we need more than a handheld or simple mobile radio and mobile antenna to get out.
I think we met both objectives. Every post was able to communicate, though we had to work out some unplanned realtime relays from post to post in some cases. Every piece of traffic we generated and distributed was passed successfully, within the time period specified. Priority traffic was handled before routine. EOCs communicated with each other. We learned a lot, both in deploying stations and in passing traffic.
Many were using antennas you built with your own two hands, for use portable in exactly this sort of scenario. And you set up portable stations, in some cases operating from emergency power. This is in the purest form of ham radio.
Well done, all. Thank you. Be proud of yourself and our ARES.
And thanks to Pat WB0EGR for his work in building the Harford County ARES. Most of his work is behind the scenes. You see mails from me, but Pat is the one running this thing, and as we have seen, he is delegating more and more to others as we develop to where we can assist him.
Special thanks to KB3GFC and the Baltimore County ARES for coordinating their part of the exercise and assisting us with ours. It is excellent we have worked together, and we will have to do more of it in the future.
And we were blessed with a very pleasant day!
WELL DONE! Can't say it any better.
Regards ... Steve Uhrig WA3SWS |
| Photographer: |
Philip Szczepanski, W3YVT |
| Location: |
Harford EOC, Forest Hill, MD |
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