Bernalillo County ARES
Bernalillo County Amateur Radio Service (BCARES) is dedicated to providing auxiliary emergency communications service to the Bernalillo County Department of Emergency Management.
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In The News
Cedro Peak Repeater Problems, 145.15
We are experiencing short time-outs on the Cedro Peak 145.15 MHz repeater. Consider setting your transceiver's Time-Out Timer (TOT) to 1 minute. When prompted by your radio that TO is approaching, unkey, pause a second, then rekey to continue your transmission. Otherwise, be cognizant of the shorter time-out on the net and unkey the transmitter, pause, then rekey to reset the repeater time-out timer after transmitting for about 30 sec to 1 minute.
Antenna Installed at the Balloon Park Museum.
BCARES completed the Balloon Museum public safety communications antenna system installation for the Bernalillo County Department of Emergency Management today, 9/17/2020. It involved the installation of a permanent 50-ohm coax cable run through the bulkhead wall of the roof hatch and the installation of a VHF antenna on the rooftop railing of the Balloon Museum.
Attention: All BCARES Members
Special Packet Training Session
There will be a Special Packet Training Session to be held at the EOC, 6840 2nd St. ABQ, NM on Monday, Sept. 14th starting at 7PM local time. The exercise will focus on the construction, sending and receiving of ICS-213 messages using the station equipment at the EOC and the portable units.
Please note the availability of the Bernalillo County EOC on Monday evening, Sep 14th, has not been finalized. A follow-on email will be disseminated if the date and time are changed.
QST: On Monday, September 14, 2020, at 7 PM there will be P2P Winlink packet radio one-on-one training at the EOC. Participants will have the option to attend in person or receive over-the-air training. Per the NM State directive, a maximum of 10 participants (2 of which are instructors) can be present for the in-person training. One trainee is already signed up so the BCARES P2P in-person training session can accommodate 7 more students. In-person training sign up will be on a first come – first serve basis. Anyone who cannot be accommodated for in-person training at the EOC can participate over-the-air. In-person and over-the-air trainees should notify, Bill Tucker, K5WRT, bltckr@gmail.com, of their desire to participate. Students will focus on transmitting and receiving Incident Command System (ICS) 213 general message emails from one FM analog packet radio station - to - another FM analog packet radio station. Instructors will provide the PCs to accommodate the message transactions. However, students can bring there own laptops with Winlink Express already loaded on their PC. Over-the-air trainees should have Winlink Express loaded on their PCs and already have hands-on experience with Keyboard-to-Keyboard message transactions using RMS Simple Terminal or some other packet radio "dumb-terminal" application.
Jim Frazier, KC5RUO
BCARES EC
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View the latest listing of Coordinated NM Repeaters at: QSL.net/NMFCC
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Packet Updates & Training
Item #1: WINMOR is being superseded by Amateur Radio Digital Open Protocol (ARDOP) and VARA HF. Recall, the Winlink System is a radio bridge to Internet email which allows connectivity to almost everyone in the world.
Item #2: The Amateur Radio Safety Foundation is requesting all HF Radio Message Server (RMS) gateway sysops still offering WINMOR to remove it in favor of ARDOP, VARA HF and Pactor 3 or 4. BCARES is currently using WINMOR. WINMOR is loaded on our BC Dept of Emergency Management radio room PCs.
The BCARES Emergency Coordinators will be discussing adding ARDOP and VARA HF, specifically VARA version 4.0. KC5RUO has been using VARA 4.0 over the last couple weeks and found it a very reliable HF email communications mode. It consistently connects to the HF RMS gateway and stays connected for the email transmission. VARA v4.0.3 (High Performance HF Modem) can be downloaded from https://rosmodem.wordpress.com/.
Item #3: The latest version of Winlink Express 1.5.30.0 with ARDOP and VARA is located at https://downloads.winlink.org/User%20Programs/.
Item#4: This week’s ARRL ARES July 15, 2020, E-Letter references an excellent presentation on Winlink and how to use it. Presented by Phil Sherrod, W4PHS, one of the Winlink developers. Phil W4PHS on Vimeo is https://vimeo.com/432903722
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Updated FEMA Courses
I noticed that FEMA released an updated course IS-800 . d on 5/6/2020. So, the current versions of the courses our members need to take are:
IS-100.c (6/25/2018),
IS-200.c (3/11/2019),
IS-700.b (6/25/2018), and
IS-800.d (5/6/2020)
It is important that all of us take the latest versions of these four courses as there have been some significant changes.
Note that there is still no IS-802 course available. After I take the updated IS-800.d course, it may become clear why this is so and whether the ESF-2 COMU concept is still valid within the National Response Framework. I'll fill you in if I come to any conclusions.
73,
Ron Reder, NM5AA
Emergency Coordinator
Sandoval County ARES
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There are TWO new RMS Gateways, in ABQ
Gateway #1: KC5QOC-10, GRID: DM65QD, Near Edith NE ABQ.
Gateway #2: NM5PB10, DM65 QC, in Knobhill area kinda close to I-25 and I-40.
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There is a relatively new Sandoval County ARES (SCARES) repeater at INTEL, Rio Rancho, you may be interested in programming into your radios.
Receive Frequency: 444.70 MHz
Transmit Frequency: 449.70 MHz
Offset: 5.0 MHz
Offset Direction: PLUS
Name: INTEL
Tone Mode: Tone
CTCSS: 100 Hz
Rx CTCSS: CSQ
Comment: Linked to SCARES Repeater Network
73,
Jim Frazier, KC5RUO
BCARES Emergency Coordinator
The 145.13 MHz Repeater Information as of 5/23/2019
Input Frequency: 144.53 MHz, PL Tone = 100 Hz
Output Frequency: 145.13 MHz
Location: Fire Station 35, along Paseo del Norte, NE Albuquerque, near the intersection of Lowell and Paseo del Norte
11700 Paseo del Norte NE, Albuquerque, NM 87122
The 145.15 MHz Cedro Peak Repeater Information as of 5/23/2019
Input Frequency: 144.55 MHz, PL Tone = 100 Hz
Output Frequency: 145.15 MHz
Location: Cedro Peak, Tijeras, New Mexico
The 442.05 MHz Repeater Information as of 5/23/2019
Input Frequency: 447.05 MHz, PL Tone = 100 Hz
Output Frequency: 442.05 MHz
Location: 1120 Coors Blvd SW, Albuquerque
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BCARES Packet Radio Practice Net Announcement
You are invited to participate in the BCARES packet radio practice net, every third Tuesday of the month at 7 PM. The first one will be held on Tuesday, April 21st, 2020 at 1900 local. The net will be initiated by way of voice on the Bernalillo County Amateur Radio Emergency Service repeater system (145.13, 145.15, and 442.05 MHz) with Bill Tucker, K5WRT, as Net Control. He'll provide instructions on how the packet net will be conducted and then we will transition over to 145.01 MHz for the packet net.
The packet radio net will be a directed net with K5WRT as Net Control. Net members will be polled sequentially to exercise the message exchange. Net Control will establish a connection with you via the SCREST digipeater. In these packet radio practice nets we’ll focus on three of the Packet Radio Modes: RMS Simple Terminal mode keyboard-to-keyboard, RMS Simple Terminal mailbox message exchanges, and Winlink Peer-to-Peer email exchanges to include passing the ICS-213 General Message Form. Be prepared to provide Net Control your SSID and PBBS SSID during the net opening session.
Hope to hear you on the net!
73
Jim Frazier BCARES EC
