Minutes of the August 5, 1995 Meeting
The Oakland ARES meeting came to order at Oakland Red Cross at 9:00
AM. Present were:
Adele Bertaud KE6HKY
Chris Burgardt KE6SSW
Katherine Burgardt KE6SSW
George Chong W6BUR
Doug Faunt N6TQS
Bob Firehock KE6IUE
Curtis Floray KA6MJO
Glenn Hammonds pending
Tim Ingham KD6CTG
Roger Jung KE6STB
Marvin Kay K6GHE
Paulette Leston KE6CFW
John Mayerhoffer WB6BYA
Bob Mayes KE6DVT
Gerald Morris AC6GF
Sherie Morris KE6MRB
David Otey WB6NER
Nardeo Persaud KE6MQX
Bob Ploss KD6YJS
Jim Ploss KB6MYV
David Pompa pending
Mike Pompa KD6PLN
Jim Porteous N6HZL
Steve Renton KE6SAL
Joe Sullivan pending
Jim Tiemstra N6OIK
Matt Trail KN6CR
Brian Treusch KJ6LL
Mark Violet N6RCG
Phil Wong WA6ODB
KE6SAF
All meetings are normally held on the first Saturday of each month (except this month).
David Otey (WB6NER) reported that the hole is drilled in Fire Station #1. Brian Treusch (KJ6LL) offered to drill any new holes. Willy Denninger (KE6EMX) finished installing a scanner,a 2M/220 and a 440 radio in the police communications van. All they need is programming the frequencies.
Jim Tiemstra (N6OIK) handed out laminated ID
cards. He described the Quick Call system, where the Fire Dept could
automate phone calls to selected hams when the fire danger becomes
critical or they need assistance. The Fire Dept. uses the RAWS
weather station to determine fire danger.
Deborah Reisman (KE6MQV) and Ron Carter should have
the Fire Patrol Manual done in a couple of months. The Oakland Ham
recruitment letter will go out after our group begins to organize
itself into committees that can handle the influx of new
membership.
The plans for the new Oakland EOC has been stalled, waiting for a new
architect.
The Oakland Fire Dept. is planning to have a Fair some time in
Sept/Oct, where they'll have demos, a helicopter landing, etc., and
they would like our presence.
David Otey (WB6NER) talked about how our group has grown to the point where we need to have committees to work on our varied agenda. Jim Ploss (KB6MYV) stressed the importance of not doing tasks alone. We brainstormed on our needs: Measure I, Red Cross, Training, Social, Newsletter, Installation, Publicity, Technical classes, Recruitment. David will develop an organizational chart and bring it to the next meeting so we could sign up in our areas of special interest.
Jim Ploss and Brian Treusch (KJ6LL) need a break from teaching the no-code tech classes and will train new instructors to carry on. They will remain guest lectureres. A suggestion was made to limit the number of times they run it to 2 or 3 per year.
We will be using packet radio to transmit boat start and stop times in the upcoming Regatta race on the Oakland Estuary in November. Here are some basic packet commands that will be used. Assume that you know how to connect a TNC to the radio, and tuned the radio to an agreed upon packet simplex keyboard-to-keyboard frequency (such as 145.03). You've also connected the TNC to the serial port on your computer and fired up a comm program. Turn on the TNC, and now what?
I will show what you type in bold . Every line you type must end with a carriage return, sometimes labeled enter. First, place the TNC in command mode by holding control down like a shift key and typing the letter c. Doing this is called hitting CTRL-C . The TNC will show:
cmd:
First, define your call sign:
cmd:MYCALL KF6ABC
Let's say you want to connect to KF6DEF:
cmd:C KF6DEF
When the connection is established you get:
*** CONNECTED to KF6DEF
and your TNC will switch into converse mode. Now, everything you type will be sent to the other station and they can type back to you. As you type a line, you can make corrections with the delete key, but once you hit return, the line is sent to the other computer and you enter the next line of text.
For the Regatta, the scoring computer will need the data in some format. For example, the start and finish times for boat 17 may look like:
S 17 10:23:54
F 17 10:54:13
To disconnect, enter CTRL-C , then:
cmd:D
If you can't make a direct connect, you can go via another TNC acting as a digipeater. To find out who else is on frequency:
cmd:MON ON cmd:MFROM ALL
Try out any call you see flash by:
cmd:C KF6DEF V W6PW-3
All stations may have to switch frequency to access a digipeater node such as NAVY on 144.99 and use:
cmd:C KF6DEF V NAVY
That's it, have fun.