Amateur Radio Emergency Service - W4ACA

Proudly using the Oak Ridge ARC (W4SKH) Repeaters & W4ACA APRS Digipeater

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Winter Weather Awareness Week

Is it that time already, it seems that just a few weeks ago we experienced 80 to 90 degree weather, oh yes, we did. In some years by mid to late November, we have experienced some significant snows in the Southern Appalachians, so we like to get the word out and get people thinking about the hazards of winter. This years pamphlet about winter weather can be found at:

2007 / 2008 Forecast

Thursday, November 15, 2007

UPDATE - CONFIRMED Tornado damages buildings in Tennessee town

PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MORRISTOWN TN

1130 AM EST THU NOV 15 2007

PRELIMINARY STORM INFORMATION FOR KIMBALL TENNESSEE STORM.

A NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SITE SURVEY TEAM HAS DONE A PRELIMINARY
SURVEY OF THE STORM DAMAGE AREA IN SOUTHERN MARION COUNTY,
TENNESSEE. THE DAMAGE WAS IN THE KIMBALL COMMUNITY...LOCATED ABOUT
3 MILES SOUTHWEST OF JASPER.

THE DAMAGE HAS BEEN JUDGED TO HAVE BEEN CAUSED BY A TORNADO...EF2 ON
THE ENHANCED FUJITA SCALE...WITH A 200 YARD WIDTH...AND A PATH
LENGTH OF 2 MILES. PEAK WIND SPEEDS WERE ESTIMATED AT 130 MPH.
THE
TIME WAS AT 702 CST (802 EST).


THE TORNADO WARNING WAS ISSUED AT 622 CST (722 EST).

Story Highlights

- Strong winds, possible tornado reported in Marion County, Tennessee

- Buildings damaged, minor injuries, in town of Kimball, near Chattanooga

- I-24 temporarily closed by storm; at least four accidents reported

- Local media report another possible tornado in Laurel County, Kentucky

Related Video from CNN

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) -- Authorities say high winds, possibly from a tornado, damaged buildings and caused minor injuries to three children in an area near Chattanooga, Tennessee, on Wednesday night.

The Tennessee Highway Patrol and residents reported seeing a tornado touch down in Marion County at 7:20 p.m.

Jeremy Heidt of the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency said the roof at Kimball Baptist Church was heavily damaged.

He said the children suffered injuries from flying glass and were taken to hospitals for treatment. Many churches have worship services on Wednesday nights. Watch how storm trashed homes across state line in Kentucky »

Six other people in Kimball, about 25 miles west of Chattanooga, also suffered injuries, but no one appeared to be seriously hurt.

Heidt said City Hall, across the street from the church, had minor damage, and an ambulance business next to it had heavy damage. A house in Marion County collapsed during the storm.

Power was out to much of the town after the storm.

Justin Lawhorne, manager of Wendy's restaurant in Kimball, said a tornado touched down about an eighth of a mile from his restaurant.

"I couldn't get the door open because the outside pressure and wind was so strong," he said, adding that there wasn't any damage to his store.

Tony Visco, manager of a Lowe's store, said there were high winds around 7 p.m.

"The winds came across my front parking lot and knocked over some sheds, but that was about it," he said. "The building was completely intact."

The THP reported at least four accidents on Interstate 24 during the storm, and Heidt said both directions of the freeway were shut down for some two hours. Exit 152 on I-24 was closed to keep traffic out of Kimball.

One of the vehicles involved was a tractor trailer carrying 1,000 pounds of toy cap gun powder. "Since there's no fire, it's not terribly volatile," Heidt said.

Witnesses said the worst of the storm lasted only about 20 seconds.

The county was under a tornado warning at the time.


Marion County schools will be closed Thursday because of the storm.

Nearby Grundy County sent three ambulances and two officers to Marion County to help out

From CNN

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Running Barefoot on the Beach

By H. P. "Pete" Friedrichs, AC7ZL

November 13, 2007

Casual QRP in a Tropical Paradise

The phone in my office rang. I picked up the receiver. My wife's voice buzzed in the earpiece.

"Have you ever been to Puerto Rico?" She asked.

"No, why?" I chuckled, wondering what would come next.

She explained that her employer was sending her to San Juan for a week on business. "Why don't you go with me? It’ll be fun." Hmmm... Let's see... a nice hotel room, warm ocean air, the beach... she didn't have to twist my arm very far.

"That sounds great. I'll put in for the vacation time." We chatted for a bit longer, and then I hung up the phone.

For better or for worse, radio and electronics are never far from my thoughts. So, as I daydreamed about my pending trip, my thoughts wandered to all of the QST articles I'd read concerning DXpeditions and those who travel in order to operate from the remote corners of the earth. I didn't know if Puerto Rico counted as an "exotic" location, or even DX, but I decided that doing a little radio work while I relaxed might be a lot of fun. I wondered if my license would be valid there.

Puerto Rico is a sovereign nation. On the other hand, it's also a commonwealth of the United States. So while Puerto Rico is self-governing, the President of Puerto Rico is in fact the president of the United States, and many US federal agencies like the FCC have jurisdiction there. To confirm this, I shot an e-mail over to the ARRL offices, asking if any special paperwork would be required to operate in Puerto Rico. They responded that none was needed

Read More

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Iraq to Be Back on the Air Later This Month


(Nov 13, 2007) -- Diya Sayah, YI1DZ, President of the Iraqi Amateur Radio Society (IARS), announced today that effective November 20, all Amateur Radio activity will be "back to normal" in Iraq. Sayah said, "All Amateur Radio operators in Iraq who carry a valid Iraqi license will be able to use their radios according to regulations of IARU Region 1 and the IARS." Amateur Radio activity in Iraq was suspended in March of this year, with the suspension affecting both Iraqi citizens as well as any foreigners -- including military personnel and contractors -- who have been on the air from Iraq. The request to halt all ham radio activity and the issuance of licenses in Iraq originated with a letter from the Iraqi Ministry of Defense to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as part of a new security plan, Sayah said.

From the ARRL Website

Confessions of a Shopping Trolley Wally

By Andy Foad G0FTD from the The South Gate Amateur Radio Club

Some time back in the beginning of 2005 I hatched a devious plan to get a decent signal out on HF using a shopping trolley.

The advantage was that I could easily take a 10 minute walk to the beach where I'd be able to have the massive advantage of nature's best linear amplifier called the sea.

It seems to add at least 20db when compared to nature's best attenuator - a typical suburban plot with poor earth conductivity and all that bricks and mortar adding insult to injury with those low angle signals.

Read More

Thursday, November 8, 2007

'It was just a miracle' - Hunting accident reveals value of radio hams to save lives

By CASSANDRA PROFITA
The Daily Astorian

The gun went off, and Karl Hauer fell to the ground.

Beside a pick-up full of hunting gear, his brother Dan stood in shock.

"I heard the shot," Astoria resident Dan Hauer recalls, "but it took me awhile to comprehend what actually happened."

The group of four hunters had just moved to a new spot in the woods off Oregon Highway 202 near Simmons Field, where they hoped to bag some deer Oct. 6. While he was arranging gear in the truck bed, Karl set the butt of his hunting rifle beside a downed tree and rested the muzzle against the truck.

The hammer, which releases the trigger, was locked down - "completely seated," Karl said later - but when he grabbed the gun to pick it back up, it caught on hard a branch and sent a bullet blasting straight up through his chest and lower jaw.

The impact knocked him down and filled his mouth with blood and pieces of bone and teeth.

Moments later, his brother rushed to his side.

"I was lying on the ground, drowning on what was left of my face," Karl said. "I looked into my brother's eyes and thought: 'Is this really happening?'"

The bullet left a large flesh wound on the left side of Karl's chest before exiting his body and hitting his lower left jaw. But it missed his upper jaw on its way up and just grazed his left brow bone.

He was lucky.

"It's just a miracle how it happened," Dan said. "It just missed all the organs in his chest. Had the angle been a little bit different, it would have been a lot worse."

Both brothers grew up in Astoria and say they have been known to pass out at the sight of a paper cut.

But out in the woods, six miles up a pot-holed logging road, and 18 miles down Highway 202 from Astoria, "We didn't have time to stop," Dan said.

Not knowing how much damage the bullet had done, Dan and family friends, Abiel Buenrostro and Anjee Taylor, gingerly loaded Karl into the back of their Jeep.

Karl used his left arm to contain his chest wound and Taylor pressed a towel to his face.

Then, with Buenrostro in the driver's seat, they took off as fast as they could safely go down the waterlogged gravel road.

They wanted to call an ambulance, but there was no cell phone service to be found - even as they got closer to the highway.

"Now what do we do?" Dan remembers thinking. "Then I remembered I had my dad's amateur radio."

Dan and Karl learned early in life to take extra precautions when going out into the woods. Their father, Ed Hauer, works with the Clatsop County Sheriff's Search and Rescue team; he and Dan are licensed ham radio operators.

"Initially, we couldn't hear anything," Dan said. But at the peak of a hill, he tuned in to a signal from Gearhart amateur radio operator Loren Wohlgemuth, who then called 9-1-1 for them.

"It was phenomenal," said Karl. "We were still bumping along the logging road when I remember hearing them on the radio saying 'help is on the way.'"

"It was such a huge relief to us," said Dan. "I thought, 'Things are finally starting to go our way.'"

They were still only a few miles from the accident site, though, and the radio signal cut out as they drove into a valley. When they could, they gave Wohlgemuth updates on their location.

Meanwhile, Dan, Taylor and Buenrostro kept talking to Karl. They'd ask him how he was doing, and he'd respond with hand signals: thumbs up or thumbs down.

Through choking bouts and discomfort throughout the drive, Karl said he prayed and tried to stay calm.

"People are helping. God's in control," he told himself. "Just don't go into shock."

Karl stayed conscious throughout the drive. At the Klatskanine Fish Hatchery, the Jeep met up with a Clatsop County Sheriff's deputy, who led them to an ambulance and medical technicians at the Olney-Walluski Volunteer Fire and Rescue station.

Wohlgemuth's help shaved valuable minutes off the emergency response time, said Ed Hauer, who's learned from countless missions searching for the lost and injured that there's a "golden hour" after any incident. "If you make the right things happen in that golden hour," he said, "your chances of surviving are greatly increased."

Dan said other than the gun shot, a lot of things went right that day.

"Everything that needed to happen happened in the time frame we needed to get treatment," he said.

Dan said he didn't know how severe Karl's injuries were until he saw the emergency response personnel cut his raincoat off to reveal a gaping chest wound.

Karl was taken to Columbia Memorial Hospital, where he was stabilized and sent via ambulance to Legacy Emanuel Hospital in Portland.

He'd left for the hunting trip at about 9 a.m that morning. At 11 p.m. doctors began a nightlong effort, involving several surgeries, to close up his chest and repair his shattered jaw.

The bullet knocked out five of his teeth and left him with dozens of staples in his chest, a titanium plate in his jaw, nerve damage on his left cheek and some hearing loss from the sound of the gun shot. But his recovery has been swift. He was released from the hospital Oct. 18.

In retrospect, Karl said, he could have employed all three of the safety mechanisms built into his rifle instead of just one. The accident was "just dumb luck," he said, "but it definitely could have been prevented."

Karl lives in Hillsboro with his wife and four sons, but he spends a lot of his free time in the woods on the North Coast.


Grateful
A lot of people from the North Coast and beyond jumped to respond to the emergency, and Karl said he's grateful for the efforts of his brother, his friends, Buenrostro and Taylor, Wohlgemuth, the sheriff's deputies and Olney-Walluski rescue team, Medix Ambulance and Columbia Memorial Hospital for getting him out of the woods and safely to treatment.

Through his surgery and recovery, he also received support from his friend Don Crabtree of Clatsop County, who helped recover the vehicles after the accident, his aunt and uncle, John and Deanna Hord, and the Schwarz family of Astoria, friends Zack and Patti Davis of Hammond and Astoria's First Presbyterian Church.

"I think what helped was staying level-headed," Karl said of the ordeal. "It could have gone any number of other ways. ... As careful as you can possibly be, stuff happens. Always, always err on the side of safety."

Monday, November 5, 2007

Motorola to Acquire Controlling Interest in Parent Company of Yaesu

According to a press release issued by Motorola, Motorola USA has announced its intention to "launch a tender offer to acquire a controlling interest in Vertex Standard Co., Ltd." Vertex Standard is the parent company of Yaesu. Upon successful completion of the tender offer and subsequent restructuring process, Motorola will own 80 percent of Vertex Standard; Tokogiken, a privately held Japanese company, controlled by current president and CEO of Vertex Standard Jun Hasegawa, will retain 20 percent, forming a joint venture. The total purchase price for 80 percent of the outstanding shares on a fully diluted basis will be approximately ¥12.3 billion (approximately US $108 million). The bid will start November 6 and end on December 26. If the bid succeeds, shares of Vertex would be delisted from the Jasdaq Securities Exchange in Japan.

Read More

FIRST FREEZE OF THE SEASON POSSIBLE FOR SOUTHERN AND CENTRAL

842
WWUS74 KMRX 060211
NPWMRX
TNZ036>040-067>071-073-081>086-098>101-061015-

URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MORRISTOWN TN
911 PM EST MON NOV 5 2007

...WINDY CONDITIONS EXPECTED IN THE MOUNTAINS TONIGHT...
...FIRST FREEZE OF THE SEASON POSSIBLE FOR SOUTHERN AND CENTRAL
TENNESSEE VALLEY...

.STRONG SOUTHWEST WINDS WILL MOVE INTO THE APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS
AHEAD OF A COLD FRONT THAT WILL MOVE THROUGH OVERNIGHT. A LINE OF
SHOWERS MOVING THROUGH THE AREA AS WELL...WILL LIKELY CAUSE
ADDITIONAL GUSTY WINDS. AFTER THE COLD FRONT PASSES
TONIGHT...TEMPERATURES WILL DROP DRAMATICALLY WITH THE FIRST
FREEZING TEMPERATURES POSSIBLE IN THE SOUTHERN AND CENTRAL
TENNESSEE VALLEY.

COUNTY SPECIFIC MESSAGE:

/O.NEW.KMRX.FZ.A.0003.071107T0900Z-071107T1500Z/
ANDERSON-UNION-GRAINGER-HAMBLEN-NORTHWEST COCKE-ROANE-LOUDON-KNOX-
JEFFERSON-NW BLOUNT-NORTH SEVIER-SEQUATCHIE-BLEDSOE-RHEA-MEIGS-
MCMINN-NORTHWEST MONROE-MARION-HAMILTON-BRADLEY-WEST POLK-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...CLINTON...OAK RIDGE...MAYNARDVILLE...
RUTLEDGE...MORRISTOWN...NEWPORT...KINGSTON...LENOIR CITY...
KNOXVILLE...DANDRIDGE...MARYVILLE...SEVIERVILLE...DUNLAP...
PIKEVILLE...DAYTON...DECATUR...ATHENS...MADISONVILLE...JASPER...
CHATTANOOGA...CLEVELAND...BENTON
911 PM EST MON NOV 5 2007 /811 PM CST MON NOV 5 2007/

...FREEZE WATCH IN EFFECT FROM LATE TUESDAY NIGHT THROUGH
WEDNESDAY MORNING...

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN MORRISTOWN HAS ISSUED A FREEZE
WATCH...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM LATE TUESDAY NIGHT THROUGH
WEDNESDAY MORNING.

TEMPERATURES WILL FALL DRAMATICALLY AFTER THE COLD FRONTAL PASSAGE
WITH TEMPERATURES DROPPING AS MUCH AS 20 DEGREES FROM MONDAYS
TEMPERATURES. OVERNIGHT LOWS WEDNESDAY MORNING WILL DROP INTO THE
LOW 30S AND UPPER 20S IN SOME AREAS.

A FREEZE WATCH MEANS SUB-FREEZING TEMPERATURES ARE POSSIBLE.
THESE CONDITIONS COULD KILL CROPS AND OTHER SENSITIVE VEGETATION
THAT ARE LEFT UNPROTECTED.

Traders net on 28.374

Hello to all,

There will be a traders net on 28.374 based out of the Hickory, NC area at 8:30 PM. It will be every Monday night to my knowledge. We look forward to hearing you there. We will be mostly horizontal polarization and will be swinging the beam around to try to hear everyone. However, some of us will try to swap over to vertical to see if we are missing anyone.

Look around and see what you have to get rid of and lets list it tonight at 8:30 PM!

73,

Rick N4WYK

P.S. If you would like to give a try at various digital modes someone is generally there every night running SSTV of various varieties (ie: MMSSTV or other programs). Plus we are hoping to try WinDRM (As soon as someone helps us figure it out). We also have tried Digital SSTV as well but find one must have a fairly strong signal to work this mode but relays can be done, etc. (ie: EasyPal). Come meet with us there!

Saturday, November 3, 2007

"Radio Hams" Film (Pete Smith Specialty)

"Radio Hams" Film - video from YouTube.

Anderson County ARES Information

The Anderson County ARES net meets every Tuesday Night at 7PM local time.
We use the the W4SKH Oak Ridge ARC repeaters.

The main repeater is: 146.880 PL Tone 88.5 (Currently Online)
The current back up is: 146.970 (Currently Online)

The ARES Nation Simplex Frequency is 147.420 and will used if required.

The net preamble for the Anderson County ARES net can be found here.
NET PREAMBLE

Net Control Station Manual

New FCC BAND PLAN (pdf) Updated Version with a different layout HF Band Plan Vertical (pdf) Courtesy of KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

If you would like to join Anderson County ARES please complete the application form and submit it by email to Jeff or Moe.


Emergency Coordinator and Staff

Jeff Yawn K4IK Emergency Coordinator (865)567-2577
Jim Bogard - KY4L Assistant Emergency Coordinator
Larry Hensley - KB4ITS Asst Emergency Coordinator / Net Manager
Steve Lothridge - KI4RGN Net Manager
Moe Brewer - N4CQW Asst Emergency Coordinator / Webmaster

Trend Micro

QTH.com Classifieds