Begin the New Year by getting your FCC Technician Class license.

The East Bay Section of the ARRL is putting on a four week long Technician Class in Alameda CA beginning in January 2012.

Each session will last about 2 ½ hours and cover different topics each week.

The classes are scheduled for Wednesday evening at 7:00pm – 9:30pm with the first class scheduled for January 18^th 2012.

The other three classes will be held on January 25^th, Feb 1^st and Feb 8^th.

All classes will be held at the Alameda Fire Department Training Building at 431 Stardust Place Alameda 94501 (intersection of W Midway and Rainbow).

The classes will prepare you for the FCC exam which is scheduled for Sunday 12^th February beginning at 9:00 am.

There is no fee for the classes, but there is a $15 fee for taking the exam. This fee includes filing costs for the exam.

There are no prerequisites and all are welcome to attend this popular class.

For more information or to register please contact David Haycock, KI6AWR by email ki6awr@arrl.net (http://us NULL.mc810 NULL.mail NULL.yahoo NULL.com/mc/compose?to=ki6awr null@null arrl NULL.net) or by phone at 510 846-0011.

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?

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

I am pleased to announce the formal signing of a local Statement of Cooperation between the ARRL East Bay Section and the Bay Area Chapter of the American Red Cross. This is a significant step as we rebuild the ARES® program in the Section. We now have a served agency that recognizes ARES locally and that is recognized by ARES.

The local Statement of Cooperation supplements the national Memorandum of Understanding between the American Red Cross and the ARRL that has been in effect since March 2010 and anticipates increased local familiarity and cooperation between the two entities. This document is available for review.

It is now more important than ever that we be able to exhibit that we are professional-quality, well-equipped, and well-trained Amateur Radio operators. To this end, we will be implementing online local ARES registration so that we will have an up to date listing of the Section’s members and leaders. We will also be implementing training and education programs sponsored by the Section to ensure a common, minimum level of training for members and leaders alike. Look for additional changes and progress as we organize and build the ARES program in the Section.

Jim Latham, AF6AQ – ARRL Life Member
Section Manager – East Bay
Emergency Communication Advisory Committee Representative – Pacific Division
ARRL, the national association for Amateur Radio™

Ham Radio Licensing Course Forming in June and July for August presentation!

The Salvation Army together with the Mt. Diablo Amateur Radio Club will be holding a 7 week course where you can learn everything you need to earn your Technician Class (entry level) FCC Amateur Radio License.

The Technician Class license is your entry to the world-wide excitement of Amateur Radio and Emergency Communications… and now you do NOT need to learn Morse code!

Course begins on…

Thursday August 18, 2011 at 7-9 pm

The Salvation Army

3950 Clayton Road, (at West St.)

Concord 94521

Registration is recommended.

Class is FREE but there is a $5 materials fee and Textbook if needed about $24. Each student must have full access to a copy of the text.

Follow up training and License testing will also be available.

To sign up email: HamRadioClass@gmail.com

For voice mail or fax: 925 465-9554