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April 30, 2005
Severe Weather Practice Net
A reminder that we will be practicing as though a severe thunderstorm warning had been issued by The National Weather Service, (NWS), for Wood County Ohio. Of interest to NWS, will be reports of wall clouds, rotating clounds, straight-line winds in excess of 50 MPH, substantial rising or rushing water, flooding of streets, large branches being blown from trees hail larger than a dime in diameter and, of course, sightings of tornadic activity.
Please prepare a report from your location that can be "passed" along to NWS. We will repeat, with every transmission, "this is a drill", to keep from alarming listeners who may not know of our practice.
Hope to see you Tuesday evening.
Thanks!
Posted by K5EYP at 10:58 PM
April 29, 2005
Senate considers bill to privatize NWS data
The US Senate is currently considering the National Weather Services Duties Act of 2005, introduced by Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA). Section 2(b) says the following:
The Secretary of Commerce shall not provide, or assist other entities in providing, a product or service (other than a product or service described in subsection (a)(1)) that is or could be provided by the private sector unless--
(1) the Secretary determines that the private sector is unwilling or unable to provide such product or service ; or
(2) the United States Government is obligated to provide such product or service under international aviation agreements to provide meteorological services and exchange meteorological information.
In other words, you know those detailed forecasts you get from the NWS web site? Kiss 'em goodbye. Free publicly available radar data? Nope, sorry. SKYWARN training? Probably not. Remember, the bill calls for NWS to drop any service that "is or could be" provided by the private sector. That covers a lot of territory, and it's territory that's critical to ARES' mission and to many of us as individual amateur radio operators. Sen. Santorum is apparently doing this because Accuweather, which makes its money largely by reselling the data they get for free from NWS, is in his district. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has more on the issue ">here (along with a form you can use to email Sens. Voinovich and DeWine). However, I recommend that you call them instead. Tell the operator that you want to speak to the staffer that handles NWS issues, and then explain to them why you want them to oppose Senate Bill 786.
Posted by Paul at 6:21 AM
April 12, 2005
Posted by K5EYP at 11:35 AM
April 4, 2005
Net control training doc posted
WCARES AEC Bob Schumann, KG2BC, has updated our training document for prospective net control operators. Our goal is to increase the number of people who are capable of acting as net controls, since that's the same basic set of skills needed for basic emergency operations. Please review the document and let any of the AECs know if you're interested in taking a net control slot for our Tuesday night net!
Posted by Paul at 10:23 AM