I would like to see our group get some good equipment and another repeater. NWS does their training out at Boys Town and the Red Cross lets us use a room for our monthly meeting at no charge which is nice. We have been trying to get an Emergency Operations trailer through the county for 3 years now and one would think that with the tornado and major wind storm we had this year they would jump on it, but the red tape still prevails. Keep the ideas comming!
No two operations or approaches are the same. Some questions and comments...
Does your NWS office have amateur radio equipment and available hams on site? Do you have a good relationship with the NWS people?
Why do you need a second repeater?
Can you connect to your NWS office with the one you have?
If not, have you considered Echolink?
I would think that the individual spotters would furnish their own radio's. (for the first 18 months after I returned to amateur radio, I used a H/T and a mag mount antenna.)
I have watched several groups that have a trailer and I see them as more trouble than they are worth with significant exceptions. The prolonged aftermath of Rita/Katrina and the shuttle recovery are two cases where they were or could have been of great value.
A designated location within a hardened site such as an EOC is preferred. We have such a location, but our SKYWARN operations are handled from home locations. (we cover a large area and have five designated net control locations.)
In most cases amateur radio is a temporary service and long term setups in the field are not needed. We have set up with a mobile radio, 12 volt power supply, and magmount antennas at shelter locations.
Initially the hams brought their own equipment, but we now have several 'go kits'. One of which saw service in Mississippi after Katrina. We had two in operation to support the evacuees from Ike.
Find out if there is a local emergency planning group and become a member. This is probably the best thing that I have done. I attended the meetings wearing something that identified me as a ham, and made myself available to give presentations about what we could do. I became a familiar face and Mr. Amateur Radio to the group.
I gave a presentation to a hospital group as a result and was given the financing to install radios in thirteen hospitals, now sixteen, in six counties.
We also received financing for our wide area repeater from the Texas Department of Health Services to cover those hospitals. Space was made available by a local TV station at 1600 feet AGL.
This repeater is now used primarily to support SKYWARN operations with EchoLink connectivity to Fort Worth.
We generated another problem, a lot of radios and not enough hams. We have setup a VE test group with two hundred new licenses and upgrades over the past two years (about half are not from our area).
This past year we have also sponsored 4 Technician classes with 45 new hams as a result. A new club has been formed with an emphasis on emergency support. Notice I wrote 'support', not communications; we get our hands dirty as needed.
At one point during the recent Ike evacuation, I looked around our EOC and it was staffed entirely by hams assigning shelters, routing buses and finding support services.
We now have a fairly sophisticated operation, but it started off with one local repeater and personal equipment. We made ourselves visible and doors started opening and money for equipment became available.
I will also add that several very dedicated people have put thousands of hours of work into making this happen.
The thing we like most? Spotting and SKYWARN... That is what holds us together. I am a weather nut first and foremost, all of this other stuff just happened.
