The Oakland Office of Emergency Services held their annual retreat in October. The focus was volunteerism. The new fire patrol manual is almost done. The simulated emergency test was rescheduled for November 9. We will be providing four fire department engine companies with their sole means of communication during a mutual response drill. The mutual response is with Oakland (OAK), Berkeley (BER), and the East Bay Regional Parks District (EBY). Several participants will get to ride in the cab of the trucks, placing their own personal mag mount antenna on the roof. Calls will be coming in to Station 1, with Station 8 being the regional dispatch center. There will be one shadow (ham staying with and relaying messages for the Captain) in each company. We will receive training from Ed, KE6WPG and conduct a desktop drill at the November meeting.
The media event originally scheduled for October 20th has been postponed until the construction of Fire Stations 24 and 26 are closer to completion.
A useful thing to know, if the repeater is down, either due to disaster or technical problem, is how to go simplex on the output. Normally we transmit on the input frequency of the repeater, and listen on the output frequency, but if the repeater is not functioning, temporarily setting up your radio so that you are both transmitting and receiving on the output means that you are transmitting on the frequency that other people are listening on. This is important because 146.88 is the frequency our group will use as a resource net during an emergency.
We are now going to give details of how to change the settings on various radios. Instructions for turning off the repeater offset usually involves repeatedly hitting one button or a pair of buttons until the + or - goes away from the screen. On some radios, the DUP indicator must also be removed. Most radios cycle between 3 states: positive offset, negative offset, no offset, so you're at most two presses away from where you want to be. On some radios (usually HTs), the function button must be held down while hitting a numeric button. On others (usually mobiles) the function button is pressed prior to pressing the button that changes the offset.
Alinco DJ580: use the SHIFT button: "func" 1
Radio Shack HT202: use the +/- button: "function" 3
Kenwood TH79A and mobiles: use the Shift button
Yaesu FT5200: use the RPT button
Icom IC32, IC2SAT: use the DUP button: "function" 4
Icom ICW31AT: press "function", then press 4 (DUP) till DUP
disappears
Some of you may know that the Oakland ARES web site is actually on two servers. Due to circumstances beyond our control, the part on www.pdarrl.org is sorely out of date. However, the part on http://ousd.k12.ca.us/~mpompa/ares has undergone a significant facelift, while still retaining most of its fast text-oriented format. Check out the newsletter cross-referencing links, the fire station map, and the Mayor's proclamation. And remember, any URL underlined in the newsletter can be jumped to in the online version.
A new threat to the ham bands, this time at 2305-2310Mhz has occurred. In the last hours of the past Congressional session, language was snuck in to the Omnibus Budget Bill to sell these frequencies to commercial bidders, bypassing the FCC's public comment procedure. The bill was passed by congress and signed by the President. The text of the bill was not released to the public before it became law. Please fax or mail your US congress members, senators, and candidates before the election, if possible. A complete description of this and other spectrum issues with a sample letter to write is at web page http://www.hams.com/Defense/ Addresses for elected officials can be found on the web at http://www.voxpop.org/zipper/
Net Control: Please help Mike, KD6PLN collect names/calls of everyone who has been net control for Oakland ARES.
Welcome: New members/participants: Bernard, KE6TYY, and Kathy. And congratulations to Chris, formerly KE6SSW who upgraded to Advanced getting the new call KQ6JZ .
Web sightings: NALCO ARES: http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ems/emradio1.html
Alameda County RACES: http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/2473/alco.html
Annual Dues: It's that time of year again to send in your 1997 dues to Oakland ARES. Bring a check to the meeting or mail it to: Oakland ARES, 347 63rd St, Oakland 94618
The Oakland ARES meeting came to order at the Oakland Red Cross at 9:00 AM. Present were:
|
Lisa Askew |
KF6BYI |
|
Bob Firehock |
KE6IUE |
|
Eileen Norberg |
KF6CEA |
|
Debbie Barragan |
KE6MRK |
|
Curtis Floray |
KA6MJO |
|
David Otey |
WB6NER |
|
Adele Bertaud |
KE6HKY |
|
Richard Gabor |
KO6TI |
|
Jim Ploss |
KB6MYV |
|
Chris Burgardt |
KQ6JZ |
|
Alan Hurn |
pending |
|
Mike Pompa |
KD6PLN |
|
Elton Carter |
KE6MRJ |
|
Edward Kilmartin |
KE6WPG |
|
Bernard Schormann |
KE6TYY |
|
Jim Carter |
K6LWA |
|
Denise Kimball |
KF6BIO |
|
Theodore Stewart |
W6NPB |
|
Susan Chan Rogers |
pending |
|
Bob Mayes |
KE6DVT |
|
Jim Tiemstra |
N6OIK |
|
Kathy Dodge |
pending |
|
Dave McGuinnes |
KF6EPQ |
|
Brian Treusch |
KJ6LL |
|
Doug Faunt |
N6TQS |
|
Gerald Morris |
AC6GF |
|
Mark Violet |
N6RCG |
Meetings are normally held on the first Saturday of each month.
The next meeting will be Saturday, November 2, 1996 at 9:00 AM
at the Red Cross Headquarters, 2111 E. 14th Street, Oakland 535-2800