For additional information contact:

Trevor Black KC0QLU

568 NW 305^th Plattsburg, MO 64477

816-783-3608

kc0qlu@nwmoares.org

“Who ya’ gonna call? Clinton County Radio Hams!”

Public Demo of Emergency Communications June 22-23

Plattsburg, MO

– Despite the Internet, cell phones, email and modern communications, every year whole regions find themselves in the dark. Tornadoes, fires, storms, ice and even the occasional cutting of fiber optic cables leave people without the means to communicate. In these cases, the one consistent service that has never failed has been Amateur Radio. These radio operators, often called “hams” provide backup communications for everything from the American Red Cross to FEMA and even for the International Space Station.

Clinton County “hams” will join with thousands of other Amateur Radio operators showing their emergency capabilities this weekend. Over the past year, the news has been full of reports of ham radio operators providing critical communications during unexpected emergencies in towns across America including the California wildfires, winter storms, tornadoes and other events world-wide. When trouble is brewing, Amateur Radio’s people are often the first to provide rescuers with critical information and communications.

This weekend, June 22-23 at the Plattsburg Fire Station, the public will have a chance to meet and talk with the Northwest Missouri ARES® ham radio operators and see for themselves what the Amateur Radio Service is about as hams across the USA will be holding public demonstrations of emergency communications abilities. Beginning at Noon Saturday and ending at Noon on Sunday, you are invited to stop by anytime day or overnight to see the demonstration.

This annual event, called "Field Day" is the climax of the week long "Amateur Radio Week" sponsored by the ARRL, the national association for Amateur Radio. Using only emergency power supplies, ham operators will construct emergency stations in parks, shopping malls, schools and backyards around the country. Their slogan, "When All Else Fails, Ham Radio Works” is more than just words to the hams as they prove they can send messages in many forms without the use of phone systems, internet or any other infrastructure that can be compromised in a crisis. More than 35,000 amateur radio operators across the country participated in last year's event. "The fastest way to turn a crisis into a total disaster is to lose communications,” said Allen Pitts of the ARRL. “From the earthquake and tsunami in Japan to tornadoes in Missouri, ham radio provided the most reliable communication networks in the first critical hours of the events. Because ham radios are not dependent on the Internet, cell towers or other infrastructure, they work when nothing else is available.We need nothing between us but air.”

In the Plattsburg area, the Northwest Missouri ARES® Group will be demonstrating Amateur Radio atthe Plattsburg Fire Protection District on Bush Street behind ShopKo. They invite the public to come and see ham radio’s new capabilities and learn how to get their own FCC radio license before the next disaster strikes. Amateur Radio is growing in the US. There are now over 700,000 Amateur Radio licensees in the US, and more than 2.5 million around the world. Through the ARRL’s Amateur Radio Emergency Services program, ham volunteers provide both emergency communications for thousands of state and local emergency response agencies and non-emergency community services too, all for free. To learn more about Amateur Radio, go to www.emergency-radio.org. The public is most cordially invited to come, meet and talk with the hams. See what modern Amateur Radio can do. They can even help you get on the air!  

The Plattsburg 2M 146.895 machine is back online after replacing the Voice chip in the controller. Thanks to ARCOM for sending the part free of charge!

KC0QLU met with hospital staff, and 2 prospective hams at the Harrison County Community Hospital in Bethany, MO Saturday Nov. 12th 2011. In attendace were: KC0QLU Trevor, WK0Q Allen, KD0ISZ Alicia, KD0ITK Marcene, Chris, and Melissa. Topics were narrowbanding, repeater use, antenna needs for the hospital, and starting a simplex net in the area. The group has been meeting monthly for a while now and hopes to expand the number of operators in that area. They are looking to have a ham class after the first of the year and have asked the NWMO ARES Group to provide that training. The NWMO ARES Group assisted the hospital with the installation of a ham station for emergency communications in 2010 and are hoping to expand in the area.

The NWMO ARES Group will have it’s monthly meeting this Thursday 9/8/2011 7pm at the Plattsburg Fire station. We will discuss the upcoming hamfest as well as other items for the group.

Reminder that the monthly business meeting is this Saturday 9am at the
Cameron Public Safety Building in Cameron, MO. Everyone is welcome, we
have alot to discuss(hamfest, secretary position, insurance, ECHOLINK,
Region net, Hospital projects, etc.) Also there have been a couple
ARES® appointments in region H as well.

Hope to see you there!

The NTS Message Handling Class held during the NWMOARES monthly meeting on Saturday, February 12 was an overwhelming success. 17 people participated in the class. Everyone in the class generated a NTS message to be sent via existing nets to a recipient.

Phones and Internet were knocked out at approx. 2:30pm. Area most affected was the city of Plattsburg and areas immediately surrounding Plattsburg.Request for possible assistance with relays of emergency traffic was received from the EMD in Cameron, MO at 4:00pm. KC0YEJ started calling members of the group in the surrounding communities to be on standby and to monitor the Plattsburg repeater for any assignments. YEJ also made general calls on the repeater. 5 members of the NWMO ARES® Group were standing by to assist if needed. At 9:30pm phones and internet were back on and the members were released from standby operations.

This type of call out was interesting due to the fact that no phones or internet were available to over half of the group. KC0YEJ did a great job of finding operators outside of the affected area. The area was relatively small but affected the Clinton County Dispatch center and 911 calls. All Sheriff's traffic was being handled thru the city of Cameron PD. No traffic was handled by the NWMO ARES® Group.

Total man hours: 5 x 7hrs = 35 man hours