SET

Operation “North Wind”

Simulated Emergency Test

December 9, 2006 from 0800 to 1200 EST

December 8th- The National Weather Service Office in Blacksburg VA will issue “Simulated Advisories” from (9-10 pm) 2100 to 2200 hours EST. These will be issued with the header “This is a drill”. The advisories will be issued on the Skywarn repeater sites listed at http://www.wx4rnk.org/repeaters.html. They will begin on 146.745 (Primary Skywarn Repeater) at 9:00 p.m. The NWS will spend about 5 minutes on each repeater. If you listen to this bulletin, enter that into your log as one piece of traffic received (counts 1 point as formal written traffic received from a served agency.)

December 9th 8:00 AM Skywarn Session: Each ham should contact a Skywarn net on their local repeater. This should consist of a net on 147.300 for NW NC. 145.13 for SW Virginia, 146.895 for the New River Valley, 146.985 Roanoke area, 147.285 for Franklin, Henry, Patrick and Pittsylvania Counties, 146.805 for areas North of the Roanoke Valley and 147.33 for areas east of the Roanoke Valley. At 8:00 am if you arrive on frequency and ask, “Is a Skywarn Net in session and you get no response. Pick up net control and begin asking for a couple of people to serve as liaison, collect reports on calls, first name, snowfall depth or ice accumulation, temperature, wind speed and utility outages. Have a net liaison that will record this information and take it up to 146.745 to deliver to NWS (WX4RNK). Have a second liaison to record information while the first liaison is delivering his or her traffic. When the first liaison returns to their home net the second liaison would go up to deliver his or her new reports on 146.745. If you have picked up 6 messages from your home net, that is 6 messages sent by people on the net. It then counts as 6 messages received by you on the home net. When you go to 146.745, it counts as 6 messages sent by you and 6 messages received by the NWS. The total count is 24 points for the 6 weather reports. You would have recorded 18 points for your home ARES unit and the NWS would have recorded 6 points. Each ARES/RACES unit needs to keep a report for their county or multi-county unit. The NWS needs to keep a report for their agency involvement. These reports in a pdf can be accessed from here. Your weather reports should be based on the simulated weather forecast for your area. If you are forecast to have 1” of ice, you may want your report to be like this example; “This is W4GHS with 7/8” (.875) inches of ice on trees and pavement, temperature 28 degrees and falling, Wind measured at 14 miles per hour with gust to 24 MPH. Power and phone out throughout the county due to downed lines.

December 9th 9:00 AM. Activation for the relief of the stricken area will begin. The search and rescue group will leave their vehicles on top of Whitetop Mountain and will begin their search with ARES members that will be using direction finding equipment, and APRS tracking equipment. They will encounter 3ft plus snow fall as they attempt to locate 4 stranded hikers with at least one injury that prevents continued foot travel by the hikers. They are searching at an elevation of around 5500 ft and the temperature is forecast to drop and high winds will hit the area within the next four hours. Extreme weather has hit all of the 13 counties of ARES District 13, the western section of ARES District 12, and the eastern part of ARES District 14. The western mountains of NC and northern piedmont of NC is also impacted. East of Lynchburg Virginia has been spared this frozen precipitation. This is an area that will be called upon to assist with supplies and personnel to aid the impacted area. NO SUPPLIES, EQUIPMENT OR PEOPLE WILL BE DISPACHED FROM OUTSIDE THE IMPACT AREA. When people are called and ask for available equipment they will try to give an accurate estimate of resources that are available in their area that could have been shipped if this was a real emergency.

If you are working as a ham in an agency or shelter and you receive a message via ICS 213. Have a local agency person complete the reply and sign the form. You will then take the reply back to the net and check-in with your traffic. Be sure to print and take a supply of forms ICS 213, Log Sheets, Radiograms and blank paper. In many cases the agency or shelter will have a copy machine but you cannot always depend on it.

Health and Welfare outgoing messages will be sent outside our area via Winlink or Packet Radio. These will be put into our Section traffic system and will be passed on the HF bands.

We will be using VHF broad coverage repeaters and HF on 3.947 to handle long-haul traffic across the commonwealth.

Tactical messages will use form ISC 213, Health and Welfare will use Radiogram forms. Be sure to record everyone’s name and call that is working at your location. Make this as a notation on your Log Sheet. Place a check mark beside everyone’s name that was licensed after January 1, 2002. We get 3 extra points for each of these new hams.

Local Traffic Handling

Each area should use a local net with a broad coverage repeater such as: 147.300 for NW NC. 145.13 for SW Virginia, 146.895 for the New River Valley, 146.985 Roanoke area, 147.285 for Franklin, Henry, Patrick and Pittsylvania Counties, 146.805 for areas North of the Roanoke Valley and 147.33 for areas east of the Roanoke Valley. When someone comes to the net with traffic, net control can send him or her off frequency to simplex or another repeater to pass his or her traffic. When their traffic is complete they should return to the net with a “recheck”. Net control will acknowledge them and enter them back into the net log. If traffic is not passed on the main net, it will allow a much heavier volume of traffic to be handled. All stations will use tactical calls and their FCC calls every 10 minutes or at the end of a communication. Be sure to use the phase, “this is a drill” very frequently throughout this drill

Logs and SET Reports

Every station must keep a log and record important information as listed on the log. Keep a copy of your traffic forms (ICS 213 and Radiograms). Every ARES jurisdiction will need to complete a SET (Simulated Emergency Test) form and send a copy to your DEC, SEC and SM (W4GHS). The EC or someone that he or she designates can complete this form.

If you send traffic out of state, count your messages sent on your report and the out-of-state station will count it as one received. This is for formal written traffic only.

We will plan on an evaluation meeting following this event, later in the month. If you have question, contact W4GHS or W4BOT.

More information will follow on this site.