A.R.E.S. Newsletter October 3, 1998

<Announcements / Calendar>

• Meeting schedule: November 7 at Red Cross December 5 at Leona Lodge
• Monthly Fire Station net: Thursday, October 1
• Simulated Emergency Test: October 3
• Pacificon: October 16-18 Concord Airport Sheraton Hotel
• Regatta: October 25 Oakland Estuary

Simulated Emergency Test>

October is a busy month for Ham Radio, and so this month's meeting will be replaced by the annual ARRL emergency drill known as the SET, or Simulated Emergency Test. Tune in your radio to 146.88 at 9:00 AM for instructions. If you signed up for the Call Quick system last year you may also be getting an automated phone call at activation time. The nature of the emergency is yet to be determined, but we plan to be operating most fire stations and establishing several sub-nets. The county OES will be available for message exchange. There was talk about getting CORE groups to participate, and we may get press coverage from Tribune editorial editor Delane Easton. At the end of the exercise all participants will be asked to convene at Leona Lodge for a debriefing session, a mini-meeting and a BBQ potluck lunch.

<RACES Report>

Jim K6JAT met with Henry Renteria and Renee Domingo from the Oakland OES. They reported that there hasn't been any Red Flag alerts yet this season and mentioned the Sibley fire which was an East Bay Regional Parks event that Oakland participated in for Mutual Aid, but the press saw it as an Oakland event. Consolidation of the OES with Fire Prevention was made official. The OES may present one of the training modules for our group. We will be mapping out where the remaining antennas will be placed around the city. Construction of the new OES was stopped for a month for a redesign and then resumed. We sent a letter thanking Henry for his talk and for reestablishing regular meetings which was cc'd to city officials.

<Special Events>

ARES/RACES Training: The first in a series of training sessions was postponed due to insufficient participants.

Walkathon: We will not participate this year due to conflicting schedules.

Regatta: Once again, packet radio will be used to relay start times of the various rowing races to the judges at the finish line. The event runs from 0600 to 1300, but it occurs after daylight savings ends so it's not as early as it sounds. Please contact Mark N6RCG to participate.

Pacificon: ORCA will host a table at the swap meet. Brian suggests selling coffee and donuts at 6AM will rake in the money. Clean out your shack and make some bucks for yourself, or donate the proceeds to the club. We need an equipment collector, setup, tear down, a food person, security (equipment will walk away by itself), and booth staff. Please contact Mike KB6MP to volunteer for one hour's duty. Label your stuff with your callsign or ORCA and a suggested price. We will haggle down 25% unless marked "FIRM". This year Pacificon will be at the Concord Airport Sheraton Hotel. Conference admission is $5 in advance and $7 at the door. Send an SASE to Pacificon 98; Box 272613; Concord 94527.

Red Cross>

The Oakland Red Cross, now located at 3901 Broadway, will be the site of the November meeting. We are interested in reestablishing a working relationship with the Red Cross and they have requested we sign a Memorandum of Understanding. A subcommittee will meet with Charles Talahara on the morning of September 29th to discuss this. The Oakland center is a regional office and the radio room is small but state of the art. We will get a tour of it after our meeting. There is decent parking in the back.

<FCC & ARRL Proposals

A brief description of the license restructuring proposals were given in September's newsletter. The FCC revised NPRM WT Docket 98-143 to fix some errors in it. Full details of both proposals are at http://www.arrl.org/news/restructuring/ The FCC requested input regarding how to reallocate novice band frequencies if (when) the novice class is dropped. Comments must be submitted before December 1 (this date is a correction from last month's newsletter). Electronic filing at http://www.fcc.gov/e-file/ecfs.html is preferred. Doug N6TQS proposed dedicating a portion of the 80/40/15 meter bands to QRP by restricting those portions to below 50W. Not only does this give hams a haven from the big guns high power stations, but this ties in with the RF exposure annual self-evaluation requirements imposed by the FCC as of January 1998. RF Exposure evaluation is simple as long as you keep below 50W.

<ORCA>

The ORCA portion of each monthly meeting will have a show and tell time. Last month Robin KF6CZL demonstrated his patented invention, the Shuttle Clip . It enables you to mount your HT on a surface such as a car dashboard by sliding the belt clip across the device, snapping it in place. He then gave out samples of the $15 device as a promotion.

<Tidbits>

Web sightings: National ARES in Louisiana: http://www.ares.org/

Eyeball QSO anyone? Doug N6TQS is wondering if anyone else is thinking about buying a Kenwood VC-H1, an SSTV handheld camera/viewer device that connects to an FM transceiver.

Directions To Leona Lodge: From 13 south: take the Redwood/Carson exit, straight at light onto the frontage road, Aliso Ave, left under the freeway at Carson, right at Mountain. Lodge is on left about 0.1 mile.

<Attendance Sheet>