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Chris now has pics of field day posted on the site. https://deltaamateurradio.com/wp/?page_id=2413
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Darrel is still in need of some volunteers for the White Spot Tour De Delta. If you can help out email him at: darrels@me.com for full details.
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via ve7wlf
To: Delta ARS members
If anyone would like to take part in Celebration of Light communications please contact Jim at the address he provided below. I may be able to answer some of your general questions but you must sign up with Jim.
Doug ~ ve7wlf
From: Jim Forsyth
Sent: Monday, June 24, 2013 8:14 PM
To:
Subject: 2013 Celebration of Light
The Celebration of Light is just over a month away. This year this does
take place on July 27th, July 31 and August 3rd.
All of you did participate in 2012, if you are available for this year’s
event, it is shaping up to be a fairly good one. Please feel free to
circulate this request to others who may be interested in coming out.
This event does take the better part of a month to put it together. If you
are available for any or all three of the nights please let me know, if you
have a favorite spot on the beach or would like to try one of the leadership
positions, I would like to know this as well. If you could send me an email
at jim.forsyth@vectorradio.ca , I would appreciate it.
Cheers,
Jim
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Alberta Flooding and Amateur Radio
As of yesterday at 10:00 PDT the amateur radio folks in Alberta stood down. I can tell you there are a lot of tired hams who dedicated many hours to the floods there. I would like to share with you the email I received from VE6KGA in Edmonton yesterday.
> On behalf of ARES members in Alberta, I want to thank all of you for your
> understanding and offers of assistance. During the emergency DSTAR was
> our only link into Canmore. As the events of the weekend unfolded, the
> Provincial Operations Center tasked us with coming up with secondary and
> tertiary comms. While HF worked intermittently and, yes I know DSTAR
> relies on the infrastructure, it did work, was the clearest comms we had
> and traffic was passed.
>
> We needed XRF021B mostly because the repeaters to be used were on there
> already on a perminant basis and the operators at all ends were complete
> rubies in the DSTAR world and would not have been able to reconnect.
> Training during an emergency was not an option
>
> Moving forward DSTAR equipment will become standard in the POC in Alberta.
> With that will be the training necessary to switch to a different
> reflector will be provided as well as step by step instructions that could
> be relayed to remote sites.
>
> Kerry Atkinson VE6GG (VE6KGA)
> Emergency Coordinator, Edmonton ARES
In talking with Kerry yesterday, to his knowledge this was the first time in North America that DSTAR was used for priority traffic as well as health and welfare. The HF was a constant relay and as he said it worked intermittently at best. If your not aware Alberta does have a VHF backbone through most of the province. Kerry said although technically it did work 100% it was often difficult to understand. As Kerry points out DSTAR was there clearest communications they had.
The hoop la that took place Friday night when the request came in for xrf021b was a real eye opener both for Kerry and myself. The request came in approx. 1 hr. prior to start of the CanNet. xrf21b had already been hooked up to another reflector to give world wide reception. We were kinda stuck that we couldn’t move the emergency traffic to xrf21c and it was too late to unlink the second reflector. The CanNet ops for the night (myself and VE3AJB) offered stoppage of the net if they needed the reflector. Both Kerry and myself have proposed changes to the “brains” of free star on how to make this more efficient moving forward.
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