As severe thunderstorms gathered in Concho County to the Northwest of the Highland Lakes, the National Weather Service issued warnings for McCulloch County.  Hams in McCulloch County were activated at the McCulloch County EOC and their weather spotters were dispatched.  Thunderstorm watches soon ensued for Llano and Burnet counties which resulted in activation of the Burnet County Emergency Operations Center (EOC).

(front to back) Riley Carruthers, Angie Sierra and Rik Chapman in the Burnet County EOC

The rapidly developing storm soon resulted in members of the Highland Lakes Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARES®) — which serves principally Burnet and Llano Counties — being activated to man pre-prepared facilities at the Burnet County Sheriff’s Department, Seton Hospital in Burnet, the Marble Falls Volunteer Fire Department, in the Marble Falls Area EMS Command vehicle and the Llano Memorial Hospital in Llano, Texas. SKYWARN® weather spotters, in both fixed locations and mobile in all three counties, kept their eyes peeled to the sky for what seemed to be inevitable from this massive storm:  a tornado in the Highland Lakes area.

Weather warnings came from McCulloch County ARES as the storm gathered strength. Skywarn and radar monitors there transmitted numerous condition reports and advance warnings into Llano and Burnet counties. Preparedness levels in the Highland Lakes were elevated in plenty of time, due to the advance information, to allow the hams to be ready to assist their served agencies if needed.

Crackling voice messages over high frequency radio circuits, warnings transmitted over the smoother sounds of VHF repeater systems, and emails gliding in bits and bytes over radio waves without need for the internet carried the news of high winds, flooded streets in Brady from torrential downpours and finally a tornado on the ground in Llano resulting in injuries. Another tornado in Burnet County destroyed the ham repeater on Park Road 4 causing the ARES operation to shift to a pre-determined backup repeater located East of Marble Falls and communications continued to flow. As commercial and public agency communications succumbed to the weather or were overloaded, Burnet EOC asked Marble Falls VFD to active all volunteers, using hams on their redundant repeater system to relay the message.  Llano Memorial obtained assistance for their patient overload from Seton, communicating via the hams due to outages in commercial communications. The Marble Falls EMS repeater was damaged and the EMS Incident Command utilized ARES to advise Seton of incoming casualties.

Fortunately this was merely a communications exercise, but it could easily have been real.

“This is a drill, this is a drill” preceded and closed each message as the equipment, personnel and procedures of Highland Lakes ARES were exercised on Saturday, October 9, 2010. Many things were learned that will aid in further improving the ability of local amateur radio “hams” to backup or supplement public service agencies when normal communications systems are disrupted or overloaded. The Burnet County EOC where Jim Barho is the County’s Emergency Coordinator (and a ham himself) has recently been upgraded with new radios including the ham radios used in this exercise, and was the hub of the activity that encompassed the three counties.

The Simulated Emergency Test is an annual event of the ARES portion of the American Radio Relay League (ARRL, the national association for Amateur Radio™).  The Highland Lakes ARES unit is comprised principally of members of the Highland Lakes Amateur Radio Club.  It and the McCulloch County ARES are both in District 8 within the South Texas section of the ARRL’s ARES organization.

Participating this year in the local drill were Rik Chapman who is the ARES District 8 Emergency Coordinator (DEC), Gil Jones (EC for Highland Lakes ARES, at the Burnet County Sheriff’s Office), Riley Carruthers (Digital Operations EC for Highland Lakes ARES), Jim Barho (Burnet County EC, at the EOC along with City of Burnet Fire Chief Mark Ingram), Angie Sierra (Assistant EC — AEC for short — Seton Hospital), Chuck Dear (AEC — Marble Falls VFD), Robyn Richter (AEC — Marble Falls EMS), Rick Miller (AEC — Llano Memorial Hospital), Malcolm Robertson (AEC — Horseshoe Bay) as a mobile Skywarn observer with Lee Thying as a fixed location Skywarn, Sanford Musgrove (AEC — Kingsland, at Llano Memorial), Brooks Blake (at the VFD), Jim McCrocklin (at Burnet County SO) and Claudia Tuckness (at Llano Memorial). In McCulloch County their ARES and Heart Of Texas Ham Operators Group included  Rick Melcer (EC — at their EOC), Frank Gendusa (at EOC), Marilyn Gendusa (at EOC), Danny Hinman  (AEC — simulated mobile), Clayton Moore (AEC — simulated radar monitor), Ed Williams (HF Liaison), Robert Duus (simulated mobile), and David Huie (simulated mobile).

Hams have access to a large portion of the frequency spectrum and in addition to the well-known voice and morse code communication methods, they utilize state of the art digital methods to send email and instant messages purely by radios without use of the internet. From the EOC hams can communicate around surrounding counties, around the state (and the entire world), and directly into the State EOC even if the public agency facilities are compromised such as by a tornado strike.

The drill demonstrated once again that hams can indeed communicate in behalf of the served agencies when all other systems fail.

APRSIS32

Click on the thumbnail for bigger image. This is APRSIS32 which is undergoing rapid development. For all the details or to download the program go to the Yahoo Groups page.

Right now I’m running it only on the internet … sees same stuff that aprs.fi does. I have also connected two different GPSs to it and that worked, putting my position out via the internet. It can ALSO be connected to a radio in iGate mode. Have not done that yet.

The author, Lynn, KJ4ER, has the goal of replacing all of the best functions in UI-view which is good since it is no longer fully configurable. I suggest giving it a try and keeping in touch with the progress.

My primary objective in getting the netbook (HP Mini 210 HD)was to move all of my ham radio programs to it for (a) the (mostly) ham dedicated computer and (b) the portability. It has the DXlabs suite with rig control, logging, psk31 and all that DXlabs has. It also has EchoLink (www.echolink.org) and the programs related to the TinyTrak4 TNC ).

Next was to make the psk31 work through the SignaLink USB device (SL) ), and then Winlink using the AGW Packet Engine and Paclink from Winlink.org . Psk31 was easy. In DXlabs WinWarbler I just picked the SL soundcard and it immediately worked.

Next for AGWPE. I had used it on the other computer so was quite familiar with setting it up and creating a “port” for the soundcard. I referenced the additional instructions from Ralph Milnes relative to the SL. Then I set up Paclink that I had used often and voila! Nothing. I could receive and decode packets, but could not transmit. The PTT on the SL was never triggered.

Then I installed the (free) AGW Terminal program (tcp version at which generates a packet directly to AGWPE.

"Ask QRA" icon

Diagnosis was done by using the AGW Terminal program.  Clicking on the “Ask QRA” icon (it’s the little tower ?) generates a packet to AGWPE each time you click it.

Using it, I could see the packet generated on the AGWPE monitor screen, and the little AGWPE modem icon in the system tray transmit indicator would light up.  So I knew a signal was going somewhere.

Audio Playback

So (this is a Windows 7 computer) I opened the audio playback devices page where I could see all of the audio devices.

When I clicked “Ask QRA” I saw where the packet was going — to TotalRecorder! As I clicked “Ask QRA” in AGW Terminal I could see full bars on the TotalRecorder device.

TotalRecorder is a fantastic audio program  that has its own drivers that apparently can intercept playback audio for processing. It was catching the Packet and not letting it get to the SignaLink. I merely disabled those drivers, deleted and redid the AGWPE port and, it works!

An oddity is that my psk31 program did not have that problem (WinWarbler from DXlabs). My guess is that it addresses the SL directly and AGWPE addresses it in some fashion that allowed this interception.

Interesting, frustrating, and mildly educational problem. The solution probably would never apply to anyone else, but maybe the diagnostic steps will.

Bottom line is that the SignaLink USB works great. For about $100 you can do everything digital and need only one USB connection to your computer.  It has it’s own soundcard so you offload that processing from your computer.

SignaLink USB

From all of my research, it appears that  having TX at 9 o’clock and RX at 12 o’clock with delay (DLY) full counterclockwise works well as a starter.

In psk31 you have full, gradual control on power output with the TX adjustment right on the front of the device — no more messing with Windows sliders.

Links

SignaLink USB / Win 7 issues specifically

Great overall soundcard page: http://kc2rlm.info/soundcardpacket/1signalinkusb.htm

Msg 7875 in SV2AGW group:  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SV2AGW/message/7875

Msg 7879 in that same group:  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SV2AGW/message/7879?threaded=1

Both of those threads discuss the problem at length.

Soundcards generally

Good Yahoo Group for AGWPE Pro: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/agwpe_pro/

Another AGWPE group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SV2AGW/

AGW Packet Engine Pro:  http://www.sv2agw.com/ham/pepro.htm

AGW Terminal program:  http://www.sv2agw.com/downloads/agwtermTcp.zip

SignaLink USB:  http://tigertronics.com/slusbmain.htm

Soundcard packet tips:  http://www.kc2rlm.info/soundcardpacket/

Packet-specific

Paclink software:  http://www.winlink.org/ClientSoftware

Paclink setup instructions: http://98.243.25.192:81/nren/winlink/paclink.pdf

APRS tracks at the 2010 Austin Marathon

You can see several APRS units having been tracked here. This view was captured about 1pm with a 6 hour window looking backwards so what you see is virtually the entire APRS support for the marathon. I’m not sure what the AMDOWN-1 tracker was, but I’m suspecting it was a mobile digipeater to give better access into the APRS-IS system, i.e. feed the tracks into the internet.

These type events are done as a public service and also to drill the skills that may be needed for emergency communications.

Also known formerly as the Amateur Radio Service, ham radio is the ultimate geek hobby.  From the days of Marconi, Western Union telegraph and other primitive forms of communication, amateur radio now melds radio, computers and space satellites; and in addition to voice and morse code communications, includes digital modes of email over the airwaves and the equivalent of instant messaging.

I was a ham years as (WB5IUT) and had let my license lapse. I am now (thanks to the ‘vanity’ callsign program) KA5GIL.  You can see more about that at the callsign info page at the ‘QRZ’ site.

My present equipment includes a mobile VHF/UHF rig (which is what hams call their radio — a Yaesu FT-7800) and a base/portable/mobile HF/VHF/UHF rig (Icom IC-7000). My antennas at the base station include for HF, a 20/40 meter trap dipole and a G5RV, each suspended at about 35 feet. The base VHF/UHF antenna is a simple J-Pole.

The antennas for the mobile include a 5/8 whip for VHF/UHF and Hustler center-loaded antennas for the HF rig. That setup is under construction at the moment but is just around the corner.

So what do hams actually ‘do’ with the hobby? The answer is too voluminous for a single website and these answers will be forthcoming.