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October 12, 2005
New Skywarn brochure ready
Thanks to the efforts of AEC Rick Lawrence KD8OM, we now have an updated SKYWARN quick guide available. This guide, which is designed to be printed two-sided and then folded in thirds, provides the basic information on how to make SKYWARN reports. It's intended for distribution to, and use by, emergency services personnel and others who may be on-scene but who haven't completed the full SKYWARN course.
Posted by Paul at 2:14 PM
October 5, 2005
SET Exercise
Thanks to all who participated in our SET exercise.
Here is a report from Bob Schuman, KG2BC, on our collective opinion from our exercise. Any other thoughts from those who participated? We’ll cover the fromal debriefing at our meeting on October 9, 2005.
- Hoot kept a detail log of every call made during the event with the time of the call. I'm in possession of that log.
- It took us a little time to get used to the tactical calls. Got better at it as time went on.
- There were several times when a call was made multiple times and no one answered. If it's Net Control being called we might want to have a secondary net control station already in place for circumstances such as that.
- We need to check and recheck our facts. We were guilty a couple times of reporting wrong information. Phil admitted he misinterpreted the information given to him by his contact at the hospital about whether or not there were 9 victims already at the hospital. Fortunately the recipient of the report called back and asked Phil to double check his source and we found out the information wasn't accurate. The Public Information Officer that was with me when I received both reports commended us for rechecking the facts given in the original report.
- Know your radios. I'm even guilty of this. My HT didn't have the keypad locked and as a result I hit the zero key without knowing it and it activated the Yaesu WIRES functionality. The was the cause of my initial transmitting problem. When I discovered that and turned off WIRES the problem was resolved. Spent 5 minutes during critical portion of drill researching the issue. Lock your keypad if you can to avid a similar issue.
- We did a good job of staying out of the way.
- The hospital location of the feed line needs to be reevaluated. When operating at the feed location you cannot see who comes into emergency and have to rely on secondary reports. This led to the miscommunication issue mentioned above.
- There were times when the activity became heavy and we went direct to the other station versus going through Net Control. Need to go through Net Control to avoid confusion. Keep request short and ask permission to go direct.
- A couple cases of operating problems due to over modulation. Listen to Net Control and if you're asked to back off the mic, do so and remember to do so on subsequent transmissions.
- Personal names shouldn't be used during an event such as this. If we're using tactical call signs do so. ID with your call sign at the end of the exchange. Not necessary on every transmission.
Bob Schumann
Posted by K5EYP at 3:13 PM