Department of Health Exercise and Section Emergency Test

Hello all,

I wanted to make sure everyone is up to speed for the November 18 exercise and Section Emergency Test (SET). Here is a kind of timeline and other information.

At 0800 local we experience a big earthquake in the New Madrid Seismic Zone. For the first hour, in some counties, there are no commercial communications or power available. AWIN will not work. The only things functioning will be ham radio and satellite phones. Remember not all counties are playing in this exercise, and even fewer are playing in this part of the exercise. Messages can be about almost anything, and we will see several about needing resources. Lists would be well served to be sent digitally. I don't believe any Health and Welfare traffic will be passed during this exercise.



At 0900 local or thereabout, a miracle occurs and AWIN is fixed! This will largely end ham involvement in the exercise. We can then begin the SET. We are trying to prove the ability of ham radio to make voice contact from every county to the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management (ADEM) in North Little Rock. One contact per county will be good enough, but of course more is OK. We can even take relays from VHF/UHF, since that is what would happen in the real world. The exchange will be the call sign and the county. The first call per county will get written down.

Also at 0900, ADEM will break for an actual radio change on HF. ADEM wants to use their federally issued radio (which has an internal phone patch and tunes everything from DC to blue light) for the first hour, and I want to use the ham radio in our building for the second hour. I expect us to be done by with the exercise and the SET by 1000 local, unless something unexpected happens.

In accordance with the state communications plan, ADEM will be available as KE5VRO on 3987.5 KHz, on local 2M and 23CM repeaters (146.94 and 443.200), WinLink, and APRS for both the exercise and the SET. The more exercise messages that come digitally the better, simply because it relieves the KE5VRO operators from hand copying the message over the air and then typing it into the ADEM forms.

All amateurs are cautioned to operate in accordance with the current FCC rules. There will be requests to do phone patches, and control operators have to be present and are responsible for the actions of the people at either end of the patch. Please don't forget to say "This is a drill" at the beginning and end of each exchange of every message. Digitally, just add "Exercise Message" somewhere.

I think we will have a great time, and I know we will find areas where improvements can be made. After all, that's why we do these tests!

Thanks to everyone that participates. It takes a lot of folks to make these things work. I appreciate it. Let me know if you have questions.

73,

J.M. Rowe
Section Manager, Arkansas Section
Amateur Radio Relay League