Hello,

Reminder, our next monthly meeting is on next Monday, June 12th, starting at 7pm.  Agenda is below.

Date

at 7:00pm (1900 hours) at Delaware County Emergency Services building (911 center)

360 Middletown Rd, Media, PA 19063

Discussion items

Time

Item

Notes

5 minutesIntroductions & Welcome


20 minutesDiscussion about Field Day

This year we will be joining the Marple Newtown Amateur Radio Club (MNARC) for ARRL Field Day 2023.  This makes the most sense for us as the majority of ARES members that participate in Field Day are MNARC members and have been joining them at Drexel Lodge Park each year.

They could use assistance with starting to hang wire antenna on Friday, June 23rd starting about 5pm.  They start with setup the following day, Saturday, June 24th starting about 10am, and operating activities start that afternoon at 2pm.  That will wrap up on Sunday, June 25th at 2pm, and tear down and cleanup work will commence after that until we are done.

Feel free to come and help out during any timeframes you are available for setup, operating and/or cleanup.  The more people we have the quicker we'll be able to get everything done.

20 minutesDiscussion of ARES Communications Trailer

Thanks to Danielle we now have our communications support trailer that we can use for a mobile operations center, located primarily at the 911 Center in Lima.

The plan is to setup and deploy the 3 original Go Kits (both the yellow and orange ones) furnished by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Counter-Terrorism Task Force.  This will give us a full set of frequencies that are available to us to operate on: HF, VHF/UHF using the Yaesu FT-857 and 1.2 GHz high speed digital data using the ICOM ID-1 DSTAR units.  The kits also have a Pactor modem, antenna tuner, notebook computer for digital modes, wireless router, DC portable printer and magnetic mount antennas.  We are in the process now of getting the radio programming updated, as well as getting newer laptops to replace the ones we have that are more than 10 years old, which will be capable of running Windows 10 and Winlink.

For the trailer, I have already setup a few items that I have, such as a desk and some storage solutions.  We have the Go Kits for there as well.  The only other thing we need for these locations are some high-gain base station type antennas, HF covering all bands, and a dual or tri band VHF/UHF.  We are meeting with Danielle to discuss these plans and the few items needed next week, so I would love to be able to have some written quotes to take.  

Since I am not an expert on HF antennas, I would like to ask everyone for some recommendations on what you think would be best.  We need to consider using both vertical HF and VHF/UHF antennas for the trailer so we can properly mount them and easily take them down/up as needed.  For the Radnor and Sharon Hill locations, we can consider using horizontal HF antennas for better performance and propagation.

20 minutesLook at ARES Communications Trailer

After discussing the trailer, we'll head on outside behind the building to take a look at the trailer.

Here are some more pictures of the trailer:

Location

https://what3words.com/teams.cowboy.gear 

Pictures of Empty Trailer

Detailed Pictures

With Desk and Equipment

With TV and Antenna

15 minutesDiscuss Next Actions/Plans for TrailerWe will then discuss work we need to do on the trailer and come up with an action plan of what we need to do next.
10 minutesGeneral discussionIf we are on schedule, we can have a general discussion and Q&A at the end of the meeting.