We had the opportunity this past week to participate in a Hurricane Exercise put on by the Georgia State Patrol and GEMA. This is another great example of how Amateur Radio Emergency Service is a key player in emergency response and disaster relief. We participated right along side GEMA, CEMA, Georgia State Patrol, Civil Air Patrol, Air National Guard, Army National Guard, Coast Guard, and others. We were integrated into thier plan and had the opportunity to establish communications with other agencies and to pass some exercise traffic.
Pre-exercise and equipment setup began on Wed morning at the Chatham County Mosquito Control facility. This location would become the Air Support Operations Center (ASOC). This particular exercise dealt specifically with the various air assets that will be used in the event of a hurricane. Steve-K4SDJ and I began setting up and testing our radio stations on Wednesday afternoon. We used a Yaesu FT-897 for HF and an Icom ID-800H for VHF, UHF, and D-Star. We erected a vertical tri-band HF antenna on the trailer hitch or Steve's Expedition. We used a mag mount for 2 meters and 70 cm operations. We were able to run our feedlines thru an access panel from the ASOC out to the antennas using a couple of 100 foot lengths of coax. Everything measured good and we got some comm checks on all bands including the D-Star System in Pembroke. Once we were happy with the setup, we informed the "air boss" that we were good to go and then we called it a day.
We showed up at the ASOC again on Thursday morning around 0730 to get things fired up and tested in time for the exercise to begin at 0800. Got good comm checks on the local 2 meter and 70 cm repeaters. Also established communications with Charles-K4GK in Sandersville. Charles is the Net Manager for Georgia Section. We also established communications with Bill-KM4Z at GEMA. The GEMA ARES Operations Team used the callsign WX4GMA. We also contacted Greg-N4VAD who was operating at the ERB in Jesup. HF conditions were not very good at all and we leveraged relay stations including Gene-W4AYK in Albany to pass info to GEMA. Gene is the Section Emergency Coordinator for GA. We were really wishing that we had an NVIS antenna for the exercise. We'll plan to have one next time and see if it helps any. After a couple of hours we decided to bring up my Yaesu FT-857D for 80 meters while Steve operated the 897 on 40 meters. I ran my 857 to the truck mounted High Sierra Sidekick. First time I've used it for EMCOMM. Peformed ok and I was able to check into the GA Traffic Net at 1300. We really had a great time working along side all the other agencies. The CAP folks and the GSP setup thier antennas on a very nice 100 foot portable tower. The CAP controlled all of the air assets as they performed thier various exercise missions throughout the day. One of the coolest aspects was the use of the GA ANG JSTARS aircraft out of Warner Robbins. They were feeding info to the ASOC and providing radio relay support to the CAP. The exercise ended just after 1300 and the CAP called all air assets to RTB.
The air boss conducted a post-exercise debrief and gave all agencies an oportunity talk about how things went. I even had the opportunity to address the group and explain what we were able to accomplish and what improvements we think we can make as a result of what we learned. They were very open to my idea of possibly using the JSTARS aircraft as a radio relay for our amateur radio operation. This would give us another way to achieve greater regional comm within the state. I explained how we could operate Military to Amateur Crossband. This was fresh on my mind since we just practiced that a couple of weeks ago.
After the debrief, Steve and I broke down the stations and packed everything back up. Ready to respond to the next exercise or emergency. What a great sense of accomplishment to be able to practice our craft and contribute to this exercise. Looking forward to the next one.
Remember, when all else fails........Amateur Radio.
We are very fortunate to have a D-Star system located fairly close to Savannah at the WVAN transmitter site in Pembroke. The Statesboro Amateur Radio Society has done a great job of learning and maintaining the system since it was installed last year. There have been some issues over the past few months with the Internet connectivity, which of course is what enables all of the D-Star systems to connect to one another. The guys suspected it might be a bad router this time so I volunteered to go out there with them to take a look since I had a spare router that I wasn't using. So I met Bob-KI4YRY and Larry-W4RA out at the WVAN tower Friday afternoon to take a look. We quickly found that the Internet router was dead. As in, won't even power up dead. I connected my router and began to program it to connect to the Internet via the Pembroke Telephone Company DSL modem. No joy. Called the help desk folks at the phone company to determine what type of authentication we need to configure for. Found out it was PPPoE which uses a telco provided username and password. She gave them to me and I configed the router accordingly. Still not syncing up to the Internet. Couldn't connect directly with the laptop either so we began to suspect the modem. The rep on the helpdesk dispatched a tech to come out and take a look. He was onsite with a new modem in about an hour. Don't expect that kind of response in Savannah! Gotta love small towns. Well, we installed the new modem, recycled the router and boom, we're on the Internet. Good stuff. While we were waiting on the tech to arrive we got the go ahead to run an ethernet cable from the DSL modem directly to the D-Star gateway. This is huge as it eliminates the need to connect from the modem to the gateway using Wireless LAN with two routers needed. Plus this would take away one more potential point of failure. We found about a 100 foot cable and began to plan how we would route it thru the facility. Easier said than done. In a totally different room about 50 feet apart in a building with cinder block walls! Well, I managed to find a suitable route after climbing around a little. We ran the cable and connected the gateway directly to the Internet router. Next, we ran into another problem. Whatever had killed the DSL modem and the #1 router also scrambled the brains of the #2 router which was connected to the gateway. Great. So Bob called his contact in Atlanta and he told me all the settings that I needed to re-configure the router for the D-Star gateway to connect to the network. Once I got it all configured and ready to go I made sure to save the config file to my laptop so that we'll have it in the future in case we ever need to re-program the router again. That will save alot of time. Once the config was complete we verified that the gateway could be seen as active via the Internet. We weren't able to get a good link established to another node or to the reflector cause no one was available that knows how to do that. So we packed everything up and decided that was enough for one day. Got alot accomplished and we should be better positioned going forward. We'll see how it goes. I sure enjoyed visiting the repeater site and getting a chance to play around with things a little. Thanks to Bob-KI4YRY and Larry-W4RA for letting me tag along. 
We had a really great work day at our club station at the Southside Fire Station on Saturday, May 30. We began arriving at about 0800 and quickly began to plan out what needed to be done. Our primary goal for the day was to get the antenna tower refurbished and back in good working order. First order of business was to get the tower lowered so we could better inspect everything. Kevin-WD0GFG climbed the tower to the roofline and and unbolted the bracket holding the tower to the building. We installed a pulley on the bracket and used it to secure a line to the trailer hitch on my truck. This made us feel a little safer as we began to lower the tilt over tower since no one really knew how much it weighs. Lowering went fine and we rested the tower on a ladder so the HF beam antenna would not lay on the ground. With the tower in this position we began to go to work. In summary we replaced the rotor and it's control cable, replaced the old 2 meter antenna with a new Diamond dual bander, replaced the feedline to the HF and the VHF/UHF antennas, replaced the wire cable that is used to crank the tower up, replaced several pulleys, U-bolts, Eye-bolts, rusted nuts and bolts, and installed three new pulleys with line for hoisting wire antennas. We also installed a new ground wire from the radio room out to the ground rods and tower. Wow, we got a lot done. With everything installed and secure, we tilted the tower back up in place and secured it to the bracket and locked everything down. We oriented the HF beam to North and calibrated the rotor control to match. Paul-KJ4FAV climbed the tower and locked the antenna shaft in place and then Kevin tested the rotor and control. Good to go. We finished the tower work around 1400 or so. It took about 11 of us six hours to do but it was well worth it and we now have a refurbished and functional system. Awesome stuff!
Had a great time at the Beaufort Airshow today. Lorie, Jackson, Lorie's sister Cyndi, and I got to the air station at about noon today. Lorie and Cyndi went their own way and I made my way over to meet up with Ryan-AJ4MY and his family. Jackson had one of our FRS radios so we could stay in touch. I "opened up" the VX-7R a few weeks back so I could transmit on that band instead of having to carry an FRS. Ryan and I had been in touch on simplex as we were on our way in. Spent and few minutes with him and his family before they left then I made my way around to check out all of the static display aircraft. I broke out the Pro-96 scanner and the VX-7R to see if I could hear any comms on the frequencies that I got from the Monitoring Times Airshow Guide. Really didn't hear anything. Tried to scan around and find the "Air Boss" frequency but no luck again. So I began to search for the Air Boss station. Found it but it was inside the gated area. Dang. I had hoped to ask one of them what freqs they were using like Dan and I did at the Vidalia Air Show a few weeks back. Couldn't get close enough to ask anyone. Bummer. So I just grabbed a bite to eat and enjoyed the show until 3:00pm when the Blue Angels show began. As I was getting the radios ready, another HAM spotted me and came over to chat. It was Wally Calhoun-KI4NXV from Rincon. We had never met before but of course we know alot of the same people. Wally is in in the Georgia Air Guard and works with the 165th in Savannah. So I tuned the scanner to the Blue Angel frequencies and was able to listen to the whole show! I listened the the main formation on the Pro-96 and the Solo aircraft on the VX-7R. Wow, it really adds alot to the show to be able to hear the pilots communicate. The were using Military band UHF for both freqs. After the show I put out a call to Jackson on the FRS channel and we hooked back up for the walk back to the truck. We spent the next 1.5 hours trying to get off the base with thousands of others. I put out a call on the local Beaufort repeater to find out if anyone had an idea why it might be taking so long. Billy-KE4CEV came back and said there had been a vehicle rollover that was causing a delay. So I chatted with him for a while during the wait. I was also monitoring the Beaufort County trunking system on the Pro-96.
