Saturday, November 14, 2020 at 8:00 am local time, The American Red Cross will be conducting a nationwide EmComm Fall Drill.   While the event STARTS at 8:00 am, you can participate at any time until 6:00 pm local.

John, W9AH may have already sent you the Drill Instructions via email, and you can also find them here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nPmWmuDbTrxQk6GeZYdalnhYTp7di_DI/view?usp=sharing

The instructions are easy to follow and comprehensive.

The premise of the exercise is that there is a major weather event that causes outages and hazardous conditions across the country.  Here’s a link to the simulated weather info:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L0oI3VAhwpgDWe6UW9jJJUyAPMmmymA1/view?usp=sharing

For a realistic experience, you might consider operating off-the-grid.

There will NOT be a net initiated for this drill.  I’d encourage everyone to monitor the W9RES and W9DK repeaters.  KD9AQM will be listening and available in the morning to serve as a ‘support desk’ of sorts.  I’m sure WN9Q could also be found there at times.  😉

If this were a real-world emergency, we’d all forward message traffic to the EC or Net Control at the EOC.  That traffic would then be consolidated and forwarded to the ARC Divisional Clearinghouse.  For the purposes of this exercise, you can direct traffic via Packet P2P (or Telnet) to the EC using the callsign KD9AQM.

You should also attempt to pass traffic DIRECTLY to the ARC Divisional Clearinghouse per the Drill Instructions, as in a real-world emergency you might be asked to be a liaison by the EOC / EC.

To claim your ARRL Connect participation points, register here:

https://arrl.volunteerhub.com/event/index/12749190

Questions?  Leave them below this post.

UPDATE:

100 Points:  Sign up for SET as a participant on ARRL Connect

1000 Points: Sign up for SET as Net Control on ARRL Connect

(Yes, you CAN sign up for both – unless Net Control is already taken)

How to edit/resize images in Winlink: http://www.philsherrod.com/Winlink/RMS_Express_Picture_Editing.pdf

Our SET objective will be to perform a damage assessment of our local area.  We are recommending to start a net, have ARES members take a short (5 mile or so) drive or a short walk around the block, and photograph simulated damage. Any downed trees, old collapsed barns, or buildings being demolished as samples would be good.  Forward all pictures to the EC.  Preferably, we’ll use System Fusion, D-Star, etc. for those so equipped.  Digital via FLDIGI is also an option.

EC’s will select the best 3 to 5 photos and forward the County Emergency Manager.

One objective of this exercise is to show EM’s how ARES/RACES can be a great asset after storms go through to assist the counties collecting data to forward to FEMA for Disaster Declarations and subsequent Disaster relief and aid.

Follow this post for updates as we near the SET date.