Let’s face this head on.
When we schedule ham radio drills, we have yet to come up with the “perfect” schedule. Usually all of our ham radio drills occur for a few hours on a Saturday morning at 0900. If we participate in an exercise sponsored by a local government, it often occurs on a weekday (Tu-We-Th).
During these pleasant weather months starting in April, there is a great competition for our time every weekend.
As “luck” would have it, the drill we activated for May 11th was a HOT one.
A SOLUTION
If you missed the drill today (May 11th), there is a way you can still train. Basically, on your own scheduled time, you pack up your gear and travel all the way to . . . your own backyard! Or a local park.
What? What good does that do?
You are simulating a mobile operation. You pack up all your gear, including an antenna that is not already set up.
You still have to locate and safely pack all your gear, have containers to prevent damage to the components, keep a master list, use a battery, set up a portable antenna and much more.
If you forget a component, you can easily go get it – just remember to keep a list.
You may find it best to label components, especially if you disconnect component parts from each other for good packing.
So, if you missed the May 11th exercise, try working from your backyard.
List of possible tasks to perform:
- Enter your GPS location into the Winlink Express program. You can determine your location using a smart phone or computer. Do you see a green cross icon?
- Send a Winlink Check In message to: WCARES-NCS. (please only local participants). Under the Standard Templates see the Mapping section and select the Winlink Check-In form
- Look around for another form to send such as ICS-213, Field Situation Report or SitRep (Situation Report).
After you have sent some messages, try your hand at generating a ICS-309 report. This form will create a list of messages and combine them into a PDF or CSV report. Under the Main Menu “Messages” tab look way down on the list for this. It can be tricky so pay close attention to all the choices.
Send the ‘309 to WCARES-NCS. That is a tactical Winlink email address. It will be sent to
wc********@wi*****.org
.
For the propagation portion of your training, try sending your messages through local repeaters on different power settings. Around here distance may be less restricting than local hilly terrain.
These tasks may be done all at once or split up the task over several attempts.
I wish you good training!
