RACES and Covering Your Stake In An Emergency.

May 14th, 2013

===== Another Ham Radio Blog =====
Another ham radio blog of interest can be found HERE.

===== RACES =====
Hopefully all who are reading this are members of RACES.  If not, you could be told to listen but not transmit during a major disaster.

If you are not a member of RACES, here is where you can get an application blank:
RACES Application

You can join the Utah State RACES e-mail list using Yahoo Groups.

RACES NETS

There are state wide RACES nets on both HF and VHF/UHF.  The following are the details of each net.

HF Net
Date: 3rd Saturday of odd numbered months
Time: 8:00 am
Frequency: 3920 kHz

VHF/UHF Net
Date: 3rd Thursday of even numbered months
Time: 8:00 pm
Frequency: Intermountain Intertie and other linked repeaters (See the Utah VHF Society members directory for more details on the Intermountain Intertie.

============= Stake Emergency Communications Nets =================
Does your stake have an Emergency Communications Net?  Does it meet on the air weekly?  A few years ago during one of our Stake Emergency drills, we dispatched ham radio and FRS operators to collect information just as they would during an emergency.  Teams of two or more people (One with a radio) went along every street and reported on every house.

We quickly learned that 5 watt handy talkies on battery power (and FRS radios with even less power) could not communicate from one end of the stake to the other.  Wards that were the greatest distance from the Stake Center could neither hear the command center or be heard by the command center.

Our communications plan was quickly modified to place two radio operators in a vehicle using a mag mount antenna with gain in the approximate center of the stake boundaries.  These two mobile operators could communicate effectively with all the other ham radio and FRS operators in both directions.  They then relayed communications to the Command Center in the Stake building.  Messages from the Command Center were also relayed out to the remote teams.

Has your stake been tested to see if you can effectively communicate with the central command center from the most remote locations in your stake?  Do you have a contingency plan to overcome any problems?  If you can't communicate in real time with your roving teams that are collecting information and reporting on houses and individuals that need immediate help, your effectiveness is compromised and your help may come too late.

Another problem we discovered was that a neighboring stake was using the exact same simplex frequency as our stake.  Normally their radio net meets on a different night so there had never been a conflict.  In a wide area disaster, both stakes would be communicating at the same time.  Big Problem.  The solution is to use tactical calls that will identify which stake the information belongs to.  For example, "The is Foothill Team 6c" indicates that this is a report from the sixth ward in the Foothill Stake and that the reporting team is team #C.

There will still be communication overlaps, but at least the messages will go to the intended recipients and not to the wrong ones (or to both at once).  Dispatching help to an area in your stake when the problem is actually in another stake and ward is a waste of resources and time.

If your stake has not tested the ability to communicate over your entire stake area, from corner to corner, it would be a good idea to schedule such a test.  It is also advisable to contact neighboring stakes and find out now if there is going to be a frequency overlap.  During an actual disaster is NOT the time to discover and deal with these types of problems.

N7OZH