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********************************************
The ARES Letter

Published by the American Radio Relay League ********************************************

November 15, 2023

Editor: Rick Palm, K1CE <k1ce@arrl.net>

IN THIS ISSUE

- ARES® Briefs, Links
- 2023 SKYWARNâ(tm)¢ Recognition Day is December 2
- ARRL November Sweepstakes as Personal COMMEX
- California Amateur Radio Operators Conduct Successful Simulated
Emergency Test "Red Skies"
- It Just Takes One
- K1CE for a Final: Keep Feed Line Lengths ASAP! (As Short as Possible)
- ARES® Resources

ARES® BRIEFS, LINKS

The Great ShakeOut is an annual international emergency response
exercise for earthquake safety and preparedness conducted on the third
Thursday of every October. Designed to raise awareness, the Great
ShakeOut <https://www.shakeout.org/> provides communities with an
opportunity to prepare, plan, and educate citizens on earthquake
safety. The United States Geologic Survey (USGS), FEMA and the National
Science Foundation are national sponsors. This year's event was held on
October 19. Amateur radio operators participated. Here are some stats
on the 2023 Great ShakeOut:

- USGS received and mapped over 230 DYFI entries via the ShakeOut
Scenario DYFI (Did You Feel It?) website (https://earthquake.usgs.gov/data/dyfi/).

- More than 1,400 DYFI reports were sent by radio operators using
RadioMail, Winlink, and PAT.

- Operators from the US and Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands, Canada, Guatemala, Honduras, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Austria, Italy, Poland, the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand
submitted DYFI reports.

Based on the Winlink CSV output, geolocation remains achallenge for
Winlink submissions. In about a third of the reports, there were
significant differences between the entered address and corresponding geocoordinates. See the ShakeOut scenario Community Internet <https://earthquake.usgs.gov/scenarios/eventpage/usshakeout2023_se/dyfi/intensity>
Intensity Map <https://earthquake.usgs.gov/scenarios/eventpage/usshakeout2023_se/dyfi/intensity>
and the global map <https://earthquake.usgs.gov/scenarios/eventpage/usshakeout2023_se/map?dyfi-responses-10km=true&shakemap-intensity=false>.
The maps show ShakeOut Scenario DYFI website and radioMail, Winlink,
and PAT submissions. -- ARRL District Emergency Coordinator Oliver
Dully, K6OLI. Dully is DEC for ARES LAX Northeast, which provides
amateur radio communications backup for 911 receiving hospitals in
northeastern Los Angeles County.

Winter Field Day <https://winterfieldday.org/> is January 23-24, 2024. According to its website: "Winter Field Day (WFD) is a communications
exercise. WFD is held on the last full weekend in January. WFD can be
worked from the comfort of your home or in a remote location. You can participate by yourself or get your friends, family, or whole club
involved. Winter Field Day is open to participants worldwide. Amateur
radio operators may use frequencies on the HF, VHF, or UHF bands and
are free to use any mode that can faithfully transmit the required
exchange intact. Similar to the ARRL Field Day, bonus points are earned
in several ways, including using non-commercial power sources,
operating from remote locations, satellite contacts, and more."

2023 SKYWARNâ(tm)¢ RECOGNITION DAY IS DECEMBER 2

The popular annual SKYWARNâ(tm)¢ Recognition Day (SRD) will be held on
December 2, 2023, from 0000Z to 2400Z. SRD was developed in 1999 by the National Weather Service and ARRL. It celebrates the contributions that volunteer SKYWARN radio operators make to the National Weather Service.
During the day, SKYWARN operators visit NWS offices and contact other
radio operators across the world.

SKYWARN Recognition Day Operating Instructions

- Object: For all amateur stations to exchange QSO information with as
many Amateur Radio SKYWARN Spotters and National Weather Service
Stations as possible on the 80, 40, 20, 15, 10, 6, and 2-meter and 70-centimeter bands. Contacts via repeaters are permitted. SKYWARN
Recognition Day serves to celebrate the contributions to public safety
made by amateur radio operators during severe weather events of the
past year.

- Date: NWS stations will operate December 2, 2023, from 0000 - 2400
UTC.

- Exchange: Call sign, name, location, signal report, a one- or
two-word description of the weather occurring at your site ("sunny,"
"partly cloudy," "windy," etc.), temperature reading if available and
SRD Number if the station has one.

- Modes: NWS stations will work various modes including SSB, FM, AM,
RTTY, Winlink, CW, FT8, FT4, and PSK31. While working digital modes,
special event stations will append "/NWS" to their call sign (e.g.,
N0A/NWS).

- Station Control Operator: It is suggested that during SRD operations
for NWS offices a non-NWS volunteer should serve as a control operator
for your station.

- Event and QSL Information: The National Weather Service will provide
event information via the SRD website <https://www.weather.gov/crh/skywarnrecognition>. Event certificates
will once again be electronic and printable from the main website after
the conclusion of SRD.

- Log Submission: To submit your log summary for SRD, you can use the
online submission form that will be made available on the NWS SRD
Recognition main page when the event is completed. Deadline for log
submission is January 31, 2024.
Note on NWS Station Operations: For 2023, guidance on in-person
amateur radio operations by volunteers will be determined by each
National Weather Service Local Forecast Office. Amateur radio operators
must make all necessary inquiries ahead of SRD with the appropriate NWS
staff at your respective Weather Forecast Office before registering the
NWS office for this event.

Involving Non-Amateur Radio SKYWARN Spotters in SRD

Amateur Radio SKYWARN groups and those groups involved with their NWS
amateur radio office station setups are encouraged to actively reach
out and find ways for non-amateur radio SKYWARN spotters to participate
in the event. This can be done through social media and other ways in coordination with the local NWS offices.

For more information on SRD:

NWS SKYWARN Recognition Day Main Page <https://www.weather.gov/crh/skywarnrecognition>

For More Information on SKYWARN:

NWS SKYWARN <https://www.weather.gov/SKYWARN>

ARRL NOVEMBER SWEEPSTAKES AS PERSONAL COMMEX

Each November, ARRL runs an HF contest that tests one's ability to make
contact with all of the ARRL and RAC (Radio Amateurs of/du Canada)
Sections during the contest periods. It's called the November
Sweepstakes. Sweepstakes is split into two contest periods. The first
contest period ran November 4-6, 2023 and was for CW operations only.
The second contest period runs November 18-20, 2023 and is for Phone
operations only. On-air times for each contest period run from 2100 UTC Saturday through 0259 UTC Monday.

New for 2023 -- Limited Antennas Overlay

Any Single Operator or Single Operator Unlimited entrant may enter
using the Limited Antennas Overlay. Operation is limited to the use of single-element antennas such as a single vertical, end-fed wire, or a
single dipole antenna no more than 50 feet above ground at its highest
point. The antenna(s) may cover multiple bands, as in the case of
multiband verticals and dipoles with fan or trap constructions. This
new entry category really lends itself to using the ARRL Sweepstakes as
a personal COMMEX (communications exercise) to test one's ability to
operate an HF portable station in a manner similar to operating in
emergency or disaster conditions. A single-element antenna may be the
simplest way to get on the air quickly. So, get out those end-fed
half-wave (EFHW), end-fed random wire (EFRW), dipole (with or without
traps), and vertical (with or without traps) antennas and test them.

In addition to these types of simple antennas, Sweepstakes provides a
great opportunity to test the rest of one's portable HF grab-and-go
kit. How long can your portable HF kit operate on portable power? Did
it run as long as you expected? How well did your single-element
antenna(s) work? Were they easy to set up? You could combine operating
in the contest while surviving on just the contents of your 72-hour
emergency supply kit during Sweepstakes' 24-hour maximum operational
period.

Since an emergency kit should last an individual 72 hours, one could
then gauge how well the kit was prepared. Would the remainder of the
kit last an additional 2 days?

If you do use the November Sweepstakes as a personal COMMEX, why not
write about your experience and send it along for use in a newsletter.
For additional information, see ARRL November Sweepstakes <http://www.arrl.org/sweepstakes>. [This article is an excerpt from the November 2023 issue of the superb Blair ARES Alert, newsletter of the
Blair County, Pennsylvania ARES, by editor Drew McGhee, KA3EJV - Ed.]

CALIFORNIA AMATEUR RADIO OPERATORS CONDUCT SUCCESSFUL SIMULATED

EMERGENCY TEST "RED SKIES"

Los Angeles, CA - On September 30, 2023, about 100 amateur radio
operators living along a 500-mile-long earthquake-prone corridor in
California participated in a regional Simulated Emergency Test (SET)
exercise named Red Skies. The exercise goal was to leverage the speed
and accuracy of email-over-radio reporting to provide a common
operating picture to all levels of stakeholders in the event of a
widespread disaster.

The exercise scenario called for earthquakes that damaged power lines
and sparked fires that grew quickly. Amateur radio operators used their Winlink, PAT and Radiomail stations to provide USGS Did You Feel It?
(DYFI) reports and other situational reports, such as the Field
Situation Report (FSR) and ICS-213 General Messages. About 1,000
Winlink reports were collected and analyzed by ARES local leadership at
the county level and were then sent to the Regional Coordinator Dennis
Kidder, W6DQ, operating with a half-dozen hams at his home superstation
near Ridgecrest, CA, far outside the exercise damage-affected area
where he operated a simulated regional level Emergency Operations
Center (EOC). Kidder and the Ridgecrest-area hams who staffed the
simulated EOC always have real-life earthquake experience because they
endured an earthquake swarm in 2019 with the strongest shake having
been a magnitude 7.1 quake.

To challenge the more experienced operators with injects, exercise
organizers sent bulletins live via radio email to operators in the
field during the exercise. "The bulletins were designed to mimic an
increasing operational tempo and a decreasing safety situation for the operators," said Oliver Dully, K6OLI, District Emergency Coordinator
for ARES LAX Northeast. "We expected operators to triage and react to
the bulletins. Many stations found it both challenging and fun.
Successful stations relied on teamwork to address the bulletins."

The exercise helped prepare radio operators and the community for
real-world emergencies by stress-testing radio networks and Winlink infrastructure and by training operators to deal with challenging and
chaotic conditions. Focusing on hazards like earthquakes and fires
injected relevant real-world conditions into the exercise.

The SET also exposed gaps in training and limits to the technology. For example, combining single messages into Winlink software-generated CSVs
reduced the overall traffic volume to the regional coordinator by 83%.
However, many duplicates in the CSVs meant the traffic sent over HF
could have been reduced even more.

"Clearly, sending 1.5 MB of traffic with Winlink over HF is a lot,"
said Dennis, W6DQ. "We want to encourage all radio operators to reduce
on-air traffic as much as possible. Using consistent CSV file names,
sending one type of CSV per message, and using time boundaries on the
exported CSV will go a long way toward using circuit capacity more efficiently."

The unique challenge of the Red Skies SET was that many stations
throughout California operated at the same time. "This was a
synchronous and time-bound exercise," said Dully. "Similar to what we
expect in the response phase of an incident. Operators used whatever
technology would be available to them, including AREDN mesh, VHF/UHF/HF Winlink, and even StarLink. LAXNORTHEAST net controls handled 292 local messages in 3 and a half hours. One of our best results was that
operators leaned on their teammates for support when traffic volumes
became challenging. Teamwork made the dream work." Many participants
deployed to hospitals and other facilities as part of the exercise.

The exercise was a great success. It exceeded the objective of
aggregating, analyzing, and passing on local traffic, built positive
working relationships among the groups involved and provided fresh
perspectives on future training needs. It also brought together groups
from the Mexican border to Sacramento under a common ICS structure with
a shared Incident Action Plan (IAP).

Participants in the regional after-action meeting agreed that more
training was desirable and expressed their eagerness for the next
exercises to build on the success of Red Skies.

For an in-depth discussion of the Red Skies Exercise, see Dennis
Kidder's, W6DQ, Red Skies RATPAC presentation <https://youtu.be/KSScHEz6ZKw?si=JM3cG-F8aScPQ_Qp>. -- ASEC San Joaquin
Valley Section, EC Eastern Kern County (California) ARES Dennis Kidder,
W6DQ <W6DQ@arrl.net>

IT JUST TAKES ONE

"It just takes one," was the mantra of Steve Smith, W9GPI, ARRL
Emergency Coordinator for Lee County, Florida. That "one" hit in late
September 2022, when Hurricane Ian slammed into southwest Florida with
160 MPH winds making it a rare category 5 storm. The worst part of the
storm passed over Lee County with barrier islands of Fort Myers Beach
and Sanibel particularly hard hit. As destructive as the winds were,
the water was worse, with 12-to-15-foot storm surge inundating much of
the coast and inland area. In the end, 150 lives were lost and damages
in the state exceeded $100 billon with much of the local area left
without power and water.

Smith called Lee County ARES into service beginning on Monday before
the anticipated landfall of Wednesday. Initially, it appeared Lee
County would be brushed by the storm. When landfall became apparent,
Lee County ARES members were positioned in 12 emergency shelters, local hospitals, and at the area's two Emergency Operations Centers (EOC).
Smith took the lead at the Lee County EOC, where he manned the net,
which provided communications with all the ARES members and sub nets.
He spent over 72 straight hours at the EOC, sleeping on a cot when
necessary. He was helped by a couple of ARES members who took over the
main communications duties while Steve solved issues for the shelters
or when he took a break.

When All Else Fails

The ARES slogan "When All Else Fails" came into play following the
historic storm. During the storm, amateur radio became the only
communications with shelter staff at several of the shelters. The
system had been designed to rely on phones and internet to maintain communications with the EOC. Both failed early into the storm. Steve's
ARES members became the link back to the county leaders.

The massive winds and storm surge washed out the causeway serving
Sanibel Island and Captiva Island. The post-storm analysis predicted it
would take months to repair. Steve and Sanibel officials came up with a
plan to help with communications for the city government. During
Hurricane Irma in 2017, the city of Sanibel lost communications. They
noticed, however, that an amateur radio repeater on the island
survived. Several Sanibel employees took classes and became licensed
operators with the thought they could help if another storm hit.
Hurricane Ian was that storm.

First, an assessment was made that the repeater on Sanibel survived and
could be operated on emergency power. Second, the Sanibel city
government (having lost their city hall in the storm) set up temporary
offices at a hotel on the Florida mainland in Fort Myers. Steve worked
with volunteers to procure a radio and antenna. He and a crew were able
to get the rig installed on the hotel, and the city had communications
with the island, all run by licensed amateur operators. Yet another
example of "When All Else Fails."

Steve and the entire ARES team received high marks from local officials including those from Lee County. When Steve took over the EC slot, he
created procedures and was instrumental in getting Lee County to fund
the creation of "go boxes" for ARES use that support VHF/UHF
communications and Winlink. He also was able to get permanent antennas installed on most of the designated emergency shelters, funded by the
county.

Steve is an electrical engineer by training and worked in marketing for manufacturers like Square D during his career. He was also an EMT and
served part time in law enforcement. As part of the Fort Myers Amateur
Radio Club (FMARC) in addition to his EC duties, he served as Chair of
the Education and Nomination committees as well as being a member of
the VE team. In mid 2023, health issues forced the former Fond du Lac, Wisconsin resident to step down from his post as EC. Steve remains
active in ARES and as a mentor to many in FMARC. - Jim Walch, K4DIP,
Fort Myers, Florida

K1CE FOR A FINAL: KEEP FEED LINE LENGTHS ASAP! (AS SHORT AS

POSSIBLE)

You can teach an old dog (I turn 70 next month) new tricks. Actually,
this isn't a new trick or even a trick at all. After moving my dipole
antennas much closer to my station, I was able to significantly shorten
my feedlines (read: 20 feet versus my previous runs of some 60 feet). I
also switched to RG-8, previously RG-58. The increase in gain was of
epic proportions and I'm so glad I did it. Think about shortening your
feedline runs and switching to the more efficient RG-8 coax. Then,
watch your S-meter and signal reports ping up a few notches!

ARES® RESOURCES

- Download the ARES Manual [PDF] <http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Public%20Service/ARES/ARESmanual2015.pdf>
- ARES Field Resources Manual [PDF] <http://www.arrl.org/files/file/ARES_FR_Manual.pdf>
- ARES Standardized Training Plan Task Book [Fillable PDF] <http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Public%20Service/ARES/ARRL-ARES-FILLABLE-TRAINING-TASK-BOOK-V2_1_1.pdf>
- ARES Standardized Training Plan Task Book [Word] <http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Public%20Service/ARES/ARRL-ARES-STANDARDIZED-TRAINING-TASK-BOOK-V1_2_2.doc>
- ARES Plan <http://www.arrl.org/ares-plan>
- ARES Group Registration
<http://www.arrl.org/ares-group-id-request-form>
- Emergency Communications Training <http://www.arrl.org/emergency-communications-training>

The Amateur Radio Emergency Service® (ARES) consists of licensed
amateurs who have voluntarily registered their qualifications and
equipment, with their local ARES leadership, for communications duty in
the public service when disaster strikes. Every licensed amateur,
regardless of membership in ARRL or any other local or national
organization is eligible to apply for membership in ARES. Training may
be required or desired to participate fully in ARES. Please inquire at
the local level for specific information. Because ARES is an amateur
radio program, only licensed radio amateurs are eligible for
membership. The possession of emergency-powered equipment is desirable,
but is not a requirement for membership.

How to Get Involved in ARES: Fill out the ARES Registration form <http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Public%20Service/fsd98.pdf> and submit
it to your local Emergency Coordinator.

SUPPORT ARES: JOIN ARRL

ARES is a program of ARRL The National Association for Amateur Radio <https://www.arrl.org>® . No other organization works harder than ARRL
to promote and protect amateur radio! ARRL members enjoy many benefits
and services including digital magazines, e-newsletters, online
learning (learn.arrl.org <https://learn.arrl.org>), and technical
support. Membership also supports programs for radio clubs, on-air
contests, Logbook of The World®, ARRL Field Day, and the all-volunteer
ARRL Field Organization.

Join ARRL or renew today! arrl.org/join <http://www.arrl.org/join>

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