Emergency Radio Club of Reno County
Hutchinson, Kansas

 

Emergency Radio Club of Reno County 

Minutes of 01 March 2007 Meeting

The March 2007 meeting was called to order by club president Scott KCÆBHE at 1905 CST and was attended by 10 members. Members and guests present were Scott KCÆBHE, Tim KA4CKR, Gary NÆFHF, Dewayne KBÆFJI, Vivian NÆLQE, Larry KÆSFV, Tom WÆUY, Beth KCÆWPI, Raymond KCÆWPJ and Lyle KCÆZFM. Scott then yielded the floor to callsign trustee Tom WÆUY.

Tom discussed the formal message form and format. It was decided that we should use the ARRL radiogram format for all of our formal message handling. Dwayne KBÆFJI suggested that we incorporate more training into our weekly nets. He also reminded everyone that when you check into a net, that you must get permission to leave the net from the net control station (NCS) so people are not trying to contact someone who has left the net. Vivian NÆLQE seconded the statements of Dwayne and stated that she really enjoyed the training that she received in the Army MARS group. Raymond KCÆWPJ advised that he was having a really hard time checking into any HF nets due to the lack of dead air between stations and many operators doubling.

Tim KA4CKR began a discussion on an Emergency Operations Plan for the ERCRC. He found a very good example of an EOP for the Linn County, Iowa ARES group. He downloaded it, made some appropriate changes and created a very good document to work from in creating an EOP for the ERCRC. He gave everyone a copy of the EOP and asked each member to take it home with them, study it and come back for the next club meeting with suggestions on how to make it better or more appropriate.

Tom discussed the benefits of having each member take the ARRL Level I Emergency Communications ARES training online. The cost is around $45 for members and $75 for non-members. It was recommended that each member complete this training within 12 months. It was stated that if someone could not afford to take the class and get the certification, they could at least get the Emergency Communications book from ARRL and learn from that. Further recommendations were that each member takes the free incident command classes from FEMA online. Those classes are IS100 and IS700.

The exercise is scheduled for March 24^th but a tractor show has invited the CERT teams to participate on that same day, so the exercise was moved to Sunday, March 25^th some time in the afternoon.

Everyone was reminded of the CERT exercise on April 28^th in El Dorado. Anyone who would like to participate AND is a member of CERT should let Tim know as soon as possible.

Net Control Stations for the months of March, April and the first week of June

o       March 6^th      - NÆFHF

o       March 13^th    - No net, RCKARA meeting

o       March 20^th    - KBÆFJI

o       March 27^th    - NÆLQE

o       April 3^rd         - KCÆVBF

o       April 10^th       - No net, RCKARA meeting

o       April 17^th       - KCÆBHE

o       April 24^th       - KA4CKR

o       May 1^st         - KÆSFV

Finally, Tom handed out some repeater guidelines to use during possible severe weather. It was suggested that most of this document be rolled into the new EOP, but everyone should keep these items in mind during bad weather.

The meeting was adjourned at 2012 hours CST.