Hall County ARES :: Gainesville Georgia

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Hall ARES Featured In CQ Magazine

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Hall County ARES has been featured in the September 2010 issue of CQ Amateur Radio Communications & Technology Magazine. The article in the Public Service section titled "Worst to First: How Hall County Amateurs Turned Emcomm Around" tells the saga of our past year and all of the work our operators have put into taking our group to the forefront of amateur radio emergency capabilities. We appreciate the fact that our hard work is being recognized at both the local, national and international level.

The article spanning pages 54 through 57 with a photo lead-in in the table of contents has multiple photos of Hall County ARES operators in action. Pictures show us operating in both the field and the station at the Hall County EMA. It has two photos of our youngest operator Marcus Shockley KJ4PCR showing the grown ups how to get things done. All of our AEC's are mentioned for their fine contributions and it details our new "out of the box" ideas of doing emcomm a little differently than a lot of other groups have done in the past and why it has been so successful for us.

We hope the article inspires others to improve thier groups and gives them some insight as to how modern emcomm is changing rapidly and we must all be prepared to adapt to the changing landscape or get left in the dust. We must remember that if we fail in our mission it is the public that we serve that loses. Our communities and our families will be the ones depending on the traffic we handle when we are called into action. We must take our jobs seriously and be ready to fulfill our motto of "when all else fails" to get the messages through.

Free Mobile Radio

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To All Area Amateur Radio Operators:

Hall County A.R.E.S. will be giving away a free Yaesu FT-1900 55 watt 2 meter mobile radio at their September meeting. The giveaway will include the radio, mobile antenna, antenna mount, coax and installation. The only requirement is that the winner be a licensed amateur and be willing to let us install the radio at the meeting. The topic of the meeting will be how to install a mobile radio with a hands on demonstration. All you have to do is show up and let us install it in your vehicle if your the winner.

All attendees will receive one free ticket for the drawing and we will be selling extra chance tickets for five bucks. We want to encourage any and all operators to attend. You do not have to be an ARES member to qualify. We encourage all of our local members and any interested members from other ARES groups to attend. Please forward this notice to anyone that you feel may be interested.

Where: Hall County Emergency Services Complex

470 Crescent Drive, Gainesville GA 30501

When: 14 September 2010 @ 7:00 pm

Cross Band Repeater

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cross_band_symb Many dual-band transceivers offer a "cross-band repeater" function, useful for linking local portables with distant repeaters, or as a quickly deployable hill-top repeater.

Crossband repeat, for those unfamiliar, is a feature offered by some dualband mobile rigs, in which one side of the radio listens to a 70cm simplex frequency and retransmits what it hears on the input of a 2-meter repeater. Audio from the 2-meter repeater’s output is retransmitted on the 70cm simplex channel. That allows the user to walk around talking and listening to the 70cm simplex frequency which is connected to the repeater via the mobile radio.

So how is this used for ARES? Well simply put we basicly create a local repeater for members to access with their HT's in the field. As an example the EmComm trailer is set up at a location that is difficult for HT users to reach a repeater but by setting up a cross-band repeater in the trailer users are now able to access the repeater through the EmComm trailer. Some of the advantages for this would be:

HT users can now use less power and conserve battery life.
A more reliable signal into the repeater (5W vs. 50 - 100W depending on location)
A cross band repeater is far less expensive than a conventional repeater.

These are just a few of the advantages of this mode. If you would like to know more about this mode of operation in conjunction with ARES leave a comment. If we have enough people interested we will create program that covers this and include a demonstration.

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