MAY 2023 FOXHUNT HAS BEEN POSTPONED DUE TO WEATHER CONCERNS. RESCHEDULE IN THE FUTURE TO BE ANNOUNCED.
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EHPC Hurricane Exercise on 5/4/23
If you have not signed up in NCTERMS (terms.ncem.gov) for the upcoming
exercise as part of ARES or AUXCOMM, you can still casually participate.
All stations are to send simulated messages to three SHARES Winlink
accounts (NCS862@winlink.org, NCS851@winlink.org and NCS396@winlink.org)
according to the instructions (see the instructions attached).”
Winlink instructions for the 2023 EHPC HURRICANE COMMUNICATION AND
INFORMATION SHARING EXERCISE. This is a pre-hurricane readiness exercise
directly in preparation for this upcoming hurricane season where
situational awareness “ground truth” may be needed.
The Scenario: Tropical storm Amy is forecasted to hit Central Florida
the Gulf Coast late on May 2, 2023 with moderate impacts. During the
same period, Hurricane Warner is expected to gain strength to a
dangerous CAT 3 Hurricane. The current forecast is to make impacts along
the Carolinas. Both of these storms are expected to cross paths and
stall in the Western Carolina’s. Sustained hurricane winds are almost
certain along the Carolina coast with gusts to 135 mph. Hurricane force
wind gusts are expected well inland along with severe flash flooding
potential inland. Coastal areas are forecasted to experience life
threatening storm surge. Expect moderate to severe infrastructure damage
across the Southeast. Wide scale power and internet outages are imminent
starting early May 3rd. This is a link to the original PDF file with maps but the bulk of the instructions are below.
The 2023 Eastern Healthcare Preparedness Coalition (EHPC)
Hurricane Communication and Information Sharing Exercise
Exercise Scenario: Hurricane “Warner” and Tropical
Storm “Amy” simultaneous convergence
Date: Thursday, May 4, 2023 from 8:00 AM EDT until 5:00 PM EDT
Our Task: to provide situational awareness “ground truth” from our
respective locations per instructions below.
Below are the Winlink instructions for the2023 EHPC HURRICANE COMMUNICATION AND
INFORMATION SHARING EXERCISE.* This pre-hurricane readiness exercise covers areas,
mainly in FEMA Region 4, and should provide an opportunity to participate, directly in
preparation for this upcoming hurricane season where situational awareness “ground truth”
may be needed.
The sponsor of this exercise* requests that both CISA SHARES and Amateur Radio resources
provide specific data through a Winlink templated Field Situation Report over VHF/UHF/HF radio or
Telnet, depending on the location of the provider of the information requested (See MAPS &
instructions). Please feel free to participate in this exercise, and alert others who may wish to
become involved..
The Task for Winlink is directed and simple:
Below is the starting scenario for this May 4th, 2023 exercise. The “communications outages” from
these two concurrent storms are listed below, and will need specific “ground truth” information,
which
is dependent on the location of those reporting. There are two separate set of instructions for
input
data. If you are NOT within one of the two dotted line affected areas 1or 2 indicated on the MAPS,
please use Telnet, which will alleviate the radio frequencies from unnecessary use and allow those
who are reporting outages to use their radios since they would have no other choice.
– CISA SHARES Winlink from member agencies & auxiliary users within the designated areas 1 or
2, use the DHS Winlink SHARES HF/VHF Network.
– Amateur Radio Winlink from any source with a proper license within the designated areas 1 or 2,
use the HF/VHF/UHF Amateur Spectrum.
If you have no radio, and are within not within one of the designated affected areas (areas 1, 2),
you
may use Telnet, which will also help alleviate additional traffic on the radio frequencies.
The resulting data from the incoming Winlink Field Situation Reports will be accumulated and shown
to the appropriate recipients in spreadsheet and mappable formats. The resulting list of exercise
participants will be provided via a FORM 309.
1
The Exercise Scenario:
Tropical storm Amy is forecasted to hit Central Florida the Gulf Coast late on May 2, 2023 with
moderate impacts. During the same period, Hurricane Warner is expected to gain strength to a
dangerous CAT 3 Hurricane. The current forecast is to make impacts along the Carolinas. Both of
these storms are expected to cross paths and stall in the Western Carolina’s. Sustained hurricane
winds are almost certain along the Carolina coast with gusts to 135 mph. Hurricane force wind gusts
are expected well inland along with severe flash flooding potential inland. Coastal areas are
forecasted to experience life threatening storm surge. Expect moderate to severe infrastructure
damage across the Southeast. Wide scale power and internet outages are imminent starting early
May 3rd.
Auxiliary Communication stations are encouraged to send a Winlink templated field situation
reports of degraded, damaged or nonexistent infrastructure
to NCS862, NCS851, and NCS396. Stations within the intact internet connectivity “area 3” are
encouraged to use TELNET in order to ease over-the-air congestion.
See MAPS below:
1.Stations located in the dashed red circles (Area 1) should submit impacts/damage reports
containing non-existent commercial power and Internet. Stations in the area 1 should make all
attempts to send reports via RF if able. If possible, It is recommended to reach an RMS
outside the
impacted area for RMS connections.
2. Stations in the yellow dashed circle (Area 2) should submit reports of POTS and Cable TV
outages.
3. Stations in area 3 are asked to submit reports with no impacts via TELNET. (Area 3 is not
specifically defined and left up to those who distribute this request for participation. Suggest
TN, KY,
MS, (FEMA R4) and VA, WVA (FEMA R3).
2
HURRICANE WARNER
3
TROPICAL STORM AMY
4
Below are the instructions for participants:
DATE and TIME of Exercise: Thursday, May 4th, from 8:00 AM EDT until 5:00 PM EDT.
– If possible, no telnet from areas where communications outage problems are shown to exist (Areas
1 & 2)
– Message to send: Winlink standard Template, Field Situation Report
– Please avoid requesting acknowledgement requests, either manually or automatically.
– If you are in affected areas 1 and 2 from both storms, report for the area 1 situation, only
using the
instructions for that area.
– CISA SHARES Winlink from member agencies & other users within these two FEMA Regions over
the DHS Winlink SHARES HF/VHF Network.
– Amateur Radio Winlink from any source with a proper license within these two FEMA Regions
sending the data over the HF/VHF/UHF Amateur Spectrum.
– If you have no radio and are not within one of these affected metro areas, you may use Telnet if
you wish.
– For the Amateur Radio Community, as a part of this exercise, I am to leave the further
distribution of this information to those copied as leaders over others within their span of
control. The further distribution of this instruction is a part of the exercise. Please use
whatever resources you have available.
– Resulting data from the Winlink Field Situation Report will be accumulated and shown to the
appropriate recipients as a spreadsheet item (via KML & CSV) for further use by anyone wishing to
provide a dashboard, and visually to the named recipients as a mapped item in Winlink Express.
The
resulting list of exercise participants will be provided via a FORM 309.
– Please avoid requesting acknowledgement, either manually or automatically.
How to fill out the Field Situation Report:
1. Open Winlink Express (insure you have a most recent version, ie. 1.7.5.0 or higher, Template
Version 1.0.226.0 or higher.)
2. Open “New Message” form. (First ICON in menu).
3. On New Message Form, look for “Select Template” menu. Choose “Select Template.”
4. Double click on “Standard Templates”
5. Double click on “Mapping GIS Forms.”
HURRICANE COMMUNITY FORUM
From Bruce, K4ONC–
Sponsored by PARS and the Town of Oriental, the National Weather
Service (NWS) in Newport/Morehead City will be holding a community forum
on hurricanes Wednesday July 20th 2022, starting at 6 PM at the Oriental Town
Hall. The forum is free and open to all. The NWS-Newport meteorologist
speak about hurricanes and their impacts on Eastern North Carolina. He
will cover the hurricane outlook for the season while emphasizing it
only takes one storm to make a big impact! A Q&A discussion period will
follow.
Being co-sponsored by PARS, members are encouraged to attend and
wear their PARS ID badges/logo shirts and the like. If you can’t attend
in person you can attend by webinar. To register please go to this link
and follow the instructions:
https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7701960628762280973
For more information contact Bruce Perkins, K4ONC, 252-626-2730 or
K4ONC@aol.com.
DUAL-MODE REPEATER EVALUATION COMPLETED:
Original FM-Only Repeater Returned to Service
1) The Oriental Repeater Group thanks the users of N4ONC/R for their
participation and tolerance while we conducted the most recent test of
the new machine. We have been listening closely since it was put online
last week, both for performance and your comments and opinions. We have
taken notes and will discuss alternative plans.
2) RX sensitivity seems still to be an issue for this particular
hardware, even with careful tuning and adding a well-matched RF preamp.
It is not acceptable. DMR performance is otherwise good, but would be
much improved with a better RX. While minor characteristics like squelch
tail and ‘picket fencing dropouts’ could be tweaked and made better,
overall results would still be unsatisfactory.
3) From comments on the air, FM-DMR frequency sharing and changing of
old habits seems to bode not well for the success of the dual-mode
approach we are trying out. Again, thanks for your tolerance and
participation.
4) On April 19th, the test will conclude. N4ONC/R will return to normal
service using 88.5Hz encode and decode (tone squelch) using the old,
familiar hardware. This work has been fruitful, as we have learned much,
both technically, and about our users.
–Lor Kutchins, W3QA, on behalf of the Oriental Repeater Group (N4ONC/R)
IMPORTANT CHANGES TO REPEATER
Here is an announcement regarding the changes in the N4ONC (Formally N4SLH) 2M repeater (147.210+ MHz).
——
N4ONC Repeater News
Midmorning March 25th, our new N4ONC 2M (Formally N4SLH) repeater will begin a period of testing on-air. The new machine will operate with dual modes, analog FM and DMR. First tests will be to ensure analog FM compatibility, and once tuned and proven we will start DMR testing. If you make minor adjustments to the radios you have always used with the old machine, you should see little difference with your FM usage of the new repeater. At least that’s the expectation at this point considering we have not tested it ‘in the wild’ among daily users yet.
The DMR side will participate in the NC4ES network, which currently links 16 machines in Eastern NC, intended for emergency and contingency communications serving hospitals and emergency management.
The new machine will use CTCSS, or PL tones, on the analog side to determine which mode a user intends. If it hears a transmission using 88.5 PL, it switches to analog FM mode, services the conversation, stays in the mode for twenty seconds, then drops the mode until reset by a new call. If it hears a digital signal without a PL, it switches to DMR mode, etc.
Analog FM settings of your radios should be as follows for compatibility:
Repeater output (your RX): 147.210 MHz
Repeater offset (change in frequency to your TX): +600 Hz (set your TX to 147.810 MHz)
Encode PL: 88.5 Hz (sensed by the repeater and allows you access)
Decode PL: 88.5 Hz (sensed by your radio to open your squelch so you can hear the repeater)
Unlike current N4ONC settings, it is important that your analog FM radio be setup with Decode PL. Without it, you will hear DMR users’ buzzsaw-like signals, which can be annoying and unpleasant.
DMR users’ channel setup should follow these settings:
RX: 147.210 MHz
TX: 147.810 MHz
CC: 1
Channel Type: D-digital
DMR mode: repeater (not simplex)
Set TS and TGs according to the lineup on the NC4ES dashboard at NC4ES.org
Meanwhile, before the 25th, please attempt to add a new memory to your radios for FM use with the new repeater. If you’re unable, after the PARS meeting on March 26, a small team of us will help you in an Elmering workshop session. Please try yourself before the meeting! We won’t be able to reprogram everyone’s radios if more than a few need help. Bring radios, radio manuals, and programming cables for your radio, and we will get you going.
—Lor Kutchins W3QA
So you want your very own Amateur License? Well this will be your big chance when there isn’t a pandemic.
When times are normal this is how it normally progresses. For the meantime you can contact our Chief Education
Amateur Radio License Course
Amateur radio operators use wireless technology to communicate with other amateurs
around the corner, around the country, and around the world. This course prepares the
student to pass the examination for the entry level Technician Class amateur radio
operator license. The course covers the relevant FCC regulations, equipment,
operating procedures, and the fundamentals of wireless technology, and finishes with
the license examination. The courses are usually held at the Pamlico Community College,
6:30 to 8:30 PM on Monday evenings. beginning on February 3rd and ending on March
30th. There is no course fee. The textbook and examination fees are $33.00 and
$15.00, respectively. For more information, and for information about future courses, contact Bill Michne at 252- 249-1175 or by email to drmichne73@gmail.com.
NC/EASTERN NC EMERGENCY AND NTS NETS
These nets are active continuously during declared emergencies on or
near these frequencies. Scheduled drills (all times local) shown if known:
Emergency Nets:
Pamlico County (ARES) FM Orient. Rptr, 147.210+( PL151.4), 1930
Wednesday. Backup on 146.550 MHz FM simplex
–Other Emergency Nets–
Eastern NC, FM Grifton, 146.685-(88.5), 2100 Thursdays
Craven County, 145.230 MHz- (88.4) Grantsboro
Coastal Carolina Emergency Net (LSB), 3.907MHz, 1900 daily
Tarheel Emergency Net (ARES Net — LSB), 3.923MHz, 1930 daily. Backup
on 7.232MHz daytime.
Weather Emergency Net:
**Note Aug 2, 2020- With the recent passing of key SKYWARN personnel
these frequencies may be monitored but the net not activated. Storm
reports to 1-800-889-6889 or email wxobs.mhx@noaa.gov **
WX4MHX Newport SKYWARN NET 2100 Tuesdays
Oriental and ALL OTHER local rptrs monitored upon activation–
Oriental, 147.210+(151.4)
Grifton, 146.685-(88.5)
Grantsboro, 145.23- (85.4)
Columbia, 146.835- (131.8)
Swansboro, 146.76- (88.5)
Jacksonville, 147.0- (88.5)
Jacksonville, 145.19- (88.5) Onslow county
Newport, 145.45- (100)
Newport, 444.825+ (88.5) Downeast 440 Linked System
Englehard, 146.71- (131.5) Outerbanks
NWS Hurricane Watch Net, SSB 14.325 and 7.268 MHz On call
SATERN, SSB 14.265 and 7.262 MHz On call
Traffic Handling Nets (Nat Traffic System), daily, listed by time:
7:45am, 3.927MHz: Carolina Morning Net (SSB) –
6:30pm, 3.923MHz: North Carolina Evening Net (SSB) –
7:00pm, 3.573MHz: Carolinas Net – Early (CW — 20-22wpm) –
8:00pm, 3.571MHz: Carolinas Slow Net (CW, 8-10wpm) –
8:30pm, 146.685MHz-(88.5): Eastern NC Traffic Net (FM, Grifton Repeater)
10:00pm, 3.573MHz: Carolinas Net — Late (CW, 15-18wpm)
ARRL SPECIAL BULLETINS
In a major communications emergency, monitor W1AW for special bulletins
as follows: Voice on the hour, Digital at 15 minutes past the hour, and
CW on the half hour.
Frequencies (MHz)
CW: 1.8025 3.5815 7.0475 14.0475 18.0975 21.0675 28.0675 50.350 147.555
DIGITAL Bulletins are sent using 45.45-baud Baudot, PSK31 in BPSK mode
and MFSK16 on a daily revolving schedule:
3.5975 7.095 14.095 18.1025 21.095 28.095 50.350 147.555
VOICE: 1.855 3.990 7.290 14.290 18.160 21.390 28.590 50.350
147.555 Transmissions on 7.290 MHz are in AM mode, DSB, full carrier.
Rev: 20200802