Upcoming Events

Starting January 9th, 2010 through February

Happy New Year to all

We're starting the new year off on a quick foot with ARES. A couple of events are scheduled for January/February. The first is on Saturday, January 9th. The day begins with a quick breakfast meeting (0800) at Boss Hogs Country Kitchen in Farmersville. It's located at 235 N Farmersville Blvd. (just north of Caldwell/Visalia Road on the west side of Farmersville Blvd.). We'll be discussing the day's events before moving to the activity in Exeter.

In Exeter, we'll be interfacing with a group called CERT during one of their drills. While the details of what exactly we'll be doing are not available at this time, they (CERT) has asked for 2-3 operators on scene for their event. I am hoping that we can pair up a couple of operators for the drill at each location so that we can provide a person that can explain what our capibilities are to those that might have questions. Bring a writing implement and paper as this group likes documentation of activities. As with the November exercise, this event may require some "at home" operators that can communicate outside the "affected" area on both HF, repeaters and packet.

I have asked Eric N6VYT if it would be possible to prepare some of the equipment that we are looking at placing in a cache for ARES so that we can get some training time familiarizing ourselves with the needs and capabities of the equipment. Equipment will be checked out and in as would be done during an actual event. This will give us practice in the proceedures that would be taking place. The Exeter event should last about 2-3 hours at the most.

As I mentioned, we have a couple of events that we're hosting in Jan/Feb. The second is Em Comm Level 1 training and testing. This go around, we'll try a three consecutive weekend format with the first two Saturdays as the class portion (about 6-7 hours each day) and a test session on the first Saturday of February. I am looking for a location to host the sessions, so if anyone has any ideas I would be most welcomed to them. Test session should last about 2-3 hours max.

Please continue to check out the Tulare County ARES webpage (www.tcares.us) for updated information regarding training (classes and live).

Again, thank you to all for your participation in 2009. Without your support, there wouldn't be communication!

Hal KC5LUB
Emergency Coordinator
Tulare County ARES