It’s that time of year again — time to start gearing up for ARRL Field Day, June 23-24, 2012! ARRL’s flagship operating event — always held the fourth full weekend in June — brings together new and experienced hams for 24 hours of operating fun. Field Day packets are now available for download (http://www NULL.arrl NULL.org/news/2012-field-day-packet-now-available) from the ARRL Web site.

Early on Saturday, November 19, John Rabold KS6M, Section Emergency Coordinator (SEC) for the East Bay Section, was very close to receiving a phone call requesting an ARES® activation in Berkeley under the Section’s new local ARES Statement of Cooperation with the American Red Cross Bay Area Chapter.

Red Cross responders to a large apartment fire at Telegraph and Haste in Berkeley were considering requesting Amateur Radio operators to shadow its own volunteers who would enter the building to do a disaster assessment. However, Berkeley’s Fire Department determined that the building was unsafe for anyone to enter (the building has since been demolished), so the disaster assessment was called off.

Had the facts been otherwise, the request would probably have been for four to six hams equipped with HTs, plus an additional net control station preferably with a portable or mobile VHF/UHF rig. The SEC would have handed this request off to the Emergency Coordinator (EC) for Berkeley. The SEC, the District Emergency Coordinator (DEC) for Alameda County, and the Section Manager (SM) would have remained in the loop to assist if additional resources had been needed.

The hams with HTs who responded would have been paired with Red Cross volunteers. The net control station (two or three persons) would have set up in a safe and quiet location across the street. The communications mission would have been to preserve the safety of all volunteer teams in the building. Data collected would have been recorded by the Red Cross volunteers.

This near-activation has raised several issues to think about: What would the Incident Radio Communications Plan (ICS 205) have been? How would that plan have been delivered to the hams who responded? Would more than just a single simplex frequency have been needed? Would a repeater have been the primary or backup channel? Would those hams have had the needed frequencies and PL tones already programmed? What would have happened if ARES had been unable to summon the requested number of hams?

Amateurs in and near the East Bay Section are invited to participate in a brief radio activity on Saturday morning, December 10, 2011 in support of the American Red Cross Bay Area (http://redcrossbayarea NULL.org/), a served agency of ARRL East Bay Section ARES®.

Early on December 10, Red Cross emergency response vehicles (ERVs) will be driven from their bases in six counties to a central location for semiannual cleaning and restocking. As they drive, their crews are asked to make frequent two-way radio contact, on a Red Cross frequency, with the Red Cross Disaster Operations Center (DOC) in Oakland. However, the transmissions are simplex, and terrain often prevents contact. The Red Cross invites assistance from the Amateur Radio community in tracking its ERVs that morning.

Between 7:30 and 9:00 am PST on December 10, licensed amateurs are asked to listen for transmissions from these vehicles on a Red Cross frequency, 47.420 MHz (FM mode). They will be calling or replying to “Oakland DOC” and will identify themselves with 4-digit numbers as their tactical IDs. Any amateur who hears such a transmission, whether or not it is acknowledged by Oakland DOC, is invited to call “Oakland DOC” via Amateur Radio to report the vehicle’s ID, its location if that was heard, the time of the transmission, and his or her own Amateur Radio call sign.

Hams at Oakland DOC will be listening for reports on two repeater systems: the Mt. Vaca Radio Club repeater on Mt. Vaca in Solano County at 147.000 MHz, minus offset (you may need to override your rig’s default setting), PL 136.5, and the linked Bay-Net system. Bay-Net has a UHF repeater in the East Bay at 443.975 MHz PL 100.0, has several repeaters in the South Bay including 443.225 MHz PL 100.0, and is available via EchoLink and IRLP; see the Bay-Net Web site (http://www NULL.bay-net NULL.org/). The American Red Cross Bay Area thanks the Mt. Vaca Radio Club and Bay-Net for their cooperation.

On these repeater systems, Oakland DOC will be announcing its availability to accept reports but will not be operating a directed net. Other amateurs may occasionally use these repeater systems for other purposes that morning, so please stand by until the frequency clears or ask the users if they will stand by for a moment so you can make your report.

Though not all dual-band HT or mobile ham radio rigs receive frequencies as low as 47 MHz, many do. We hope that hams with that capability, including those participating in the ARRL 10 Meter Contest that morning, will enjoy this challenge.

Amateur Radio operators and others who are studying the ARRL’s Introduction to Emergency Communication Course (EC-001) will have an opportunity to take the course’s examination and earn the ARRL completion certificate in early January.

ARRL Field Examiners have scheduled an EC-001 final exam for 11:00 am on Saturday, January 7, 2012 in Oakland. It will be held in the Media Room of Oakland’s Fire Station 1, 1605 Martin Luther King Jr Way at 17th Street. The exam fee is $15. The exam consists of 35 multiple-choice questions, and a passing score is 80% or better.

EC-001 is designed to provide basic knowledge and tools for any emergency communications volunteer. One need not be a licensed Amateur Radio operator to sit for the exam or earn the completion certificate. Candidates for this exam will have studied the course materials on line, in a local Field Class session, or by studying the course transcript, The ARRL Introduction to Emergency Communication Course, 4th Edition.

Candidates should complete and obtain certificates for two free online FEMA EMI Independent Study courses before beginning their EC-001 course studies. Those courses are IS-100, “Introduction to Incident Command System”, and IS-700, “National Incident Management System (NIMS), An Introduction”. At the EC-001 exam, each candidate must provide the dates shown on his or her completion certificates for IS-100 and IS-700.

EC-001 and its prerequisites, IS-100 and IS-700, are among the course training requirements to qualify for Full Member status in the ARRL East Bay Section ARES® program.

More information about the EC-001 course and exam is available here.

David A. Haycock KI6AWR
Assistant Section Manager, Education and Training, East Bay Section

John Rabold KS6M
Section Emergency Coordinator, East Bay Section

See the Contact page for contact information.

The East Bay Section ARES® program in Contra Costa County is being restructured. ARES is the Amateur Radio Emergency Service®, an emergency-communications program of the ARRL. Applications for ARES positions in Contra Costa are invited.

In recent years, ARES in Contra Costa has not conformed to the ARRL’s expectations for the program or to ARES elsewhere in the East Bay Section. Some emergency-communications related leadership/management appointments were made that were not ARES appointments but were thought by some to be so. Some appointments or assigned responsibilities were not consistent with the ARES structure and principles as set forth by the ARRL.

Section Emergency Coordinator John Rabold KS6M and I decided that attempting to reassign current appointees to different positions would most likely make many appointees unhappy and result in a poor match of the available skills and enthusiasms to the available positions. Instead, all ARRL ARES appointments in Contra Costa are being vacated, resulting in a clean slate, and the current appointees and all other qualified amateurs in Contra Costa are being invited to apply for those positions.

Available ARES leadership/management positions in Contra Costa include one District Emergency Coordinator (DEC) to coordinate the program across the county and one Emergency Coordinator (EC) to manage ARES in each community. Small communities will be grouped together or with adjacent large communities so that no EC jurisdiction is too small to be viable and so that every licensed amateur in the county resides in a single EC jurisdiction.

The SM and SEC also invite applications for Official Emergency Station (OES) appointments. OES appointees will have superior operating skills and significant operating experience. They may also have capable base stations at their disposal, with the expectation that in ARES activation they may be assigned to operate from those stations.

Each of these appointments requires full ARRL membership and an active Technician-class Amateur Radio license or above. Appointees will be expected not only to meet the East Bay Section’s requirements for Full Member status but also to complete additional ARES-management course training as well within a limited time after appointment. The deadline for application is 17 December 2011.

Qualified amateurs in Contra Costa who are interested in being a part of the ARES management team should contact Section Emergency Coordinator John Rabold KS6M at

Additional information can be found on the ARRL East Bay Section ARES Web pages:
http://www.eastbaysectionarrl.org/ares