AAR for Missing Person Response May 2nd 2010

Responders:

KCØQLU Trevor Black
KCØYEJ Brian Lusk
NJØZ George Pease
KCØZYX Bernie Cassidy
NØSWP Steve Polley
KCØIMF Toby McMullen
(3 other members responded for their Public Safety entities.)

I received a call from the Clinton County EMD Blair Shock at approx. 2200 Sunday May 2nd 2010. The request was for manpower to attempt to locate a missing person south of Cameron, MO. Public safety and local Fire Departments had been searching since 7pm. We were requested to meet at the Elk’s Lodge 2 miles south of Cameron on 69 HWY were we would get our assignment. I began calling members of the group that had training in Search and Rescue. I also made an announcement on the local repeater for anyone that was able to respond. KCØQLU, KCYEJ, NJØZ, KCØZYX, NØSWP, KCØIMF were able to respond. I sent an email to the SEC and ASEC to inform them of our call out request. Upon arriving at the staging area (2245) we were put in standby until IC gave us an assignment. All members checked in with the Staging manager. At 2330 all volunteers were told to report to the IC for a search assignment for an area from 326th street to the Fireworks stand at I-35. After about 25 min. all volunteers were instructed to go back to staging area and await orders. We arrived back at staging area at 0012 hours and were informed there would be a de-briefing shortly. 0023 all search personnel were informed that the missing person had been recovered. Everyone was thanked for responding and dismissed at 0025.

Total Manpower hours:

7 x 2.5 = 17.5 hours

All in all the response went very well. I was very encouraged with the response especially given the time of day and there were storms in the area that would have made things difficult. The storms stayed to the north of our location.Steve Polley, NØSWP gave weather updates for the first 30 minutes of the event Everyone that responded brought water, flashlights, and rain gear and hand held radios. We ran a very relaxed net on the Osborn repeater as we were all within simplex range. There were only minor issues with signals to the repeater. The location of the staging area was in a low area that caused some repeats but not enough to hamper communications.

Lessons learned:I don’t have everyone’s number in my phone. We have just updated our website so contact info is not complete. We will fix this at our next meeting May 8th. Need to have someone outside the event to run net and keep track of people.

I was very happy with the response and professionalism that our group showed. Each one was there to help in anyway they could and would do it again when called upon.

Trevor Black
KC0QLU
NWMO ARES Group

Some more additions have been made to the site

• Login page structure has been changed, with a member's page replacing the login link in the menu bar.  This page is accesibe to verified members of the group only, and contains information useful for group members. The login section has been moved to the sidebar. After you login, you have easy access to your dashboard and wordpress profile. Note that your wordpress profile and forums profile are seperate. Adjustments to your forum profile must be made from the forums page.
• The webpage now renders well on smartphones, with a special layout and structure just for these devices.
• The forums page is now a single column, making the forums much more readable..
• All pages served to people who are not logged in are now cached, speeding up the site, and reducing server overhead.

I still have plenty left to do, so stay tuned for more changes.

Blair

NWMO ARES Group Meeting – 4/10/2010

• Meeting called to order 9:09AM

• Went over the new website.

• Field Day – June 26 – Plattsburg Fire Station
  • Ron will be there
  • Bob will try to make it out there.
  • Further discussion delayed until next month when more people will be present.

• Repeater shed work – No date set. Going to get together on a nice weekend and take care of it.

• Winlink station at CRMC is online – 145.090 – Callsign is KC0QLU.

• Meeting adjourned 10:09

The new site is up and running well. 

Registration / Login Instructions

In order to be able to use the forums, you must register.  You can do this either by clicking the log in link in the top right corner of the page, or clicking on the forums link, then the register link on the top of the forums.  In order to register, you must have a valid email address, as a random password will be emailed to you when you register.  Also, I have recaptcha installed to hopefully prevent any bots from being able to register.

Once you are registered, you can login via the login link at the top right, or the login link at the top of the forums.

NWMOARES.ORG email available

I have setup google apps for our domain, nwmoares.org.  This allows each member to have an nwmoares.org email address.

Ongoing Changes

I anticipate making further changes to the appearance of the site, as well as enabling additional functions.  I do not anticipate making any further drastic changes to the forums or the other main components fo the site save for minor tweaks to increase readability and things of that nature.  If you find something that you feel should be changed, please let me know about it. If you find something that doesn't work as it should, or is broken, let me know about it.  I will start a forum thread related to the site changes to let you all voice your opinion about what you like and what you think stinks.

Blair

If you are reading this, you have found our new webpage.  Forums will be up shortly. Forums are up and running.

Blair

Field Day is an annual event held on the 4th Saturday of June nationwide. Radio amateurs from around the world operate for a 24 hour period, with an emphasis placed on emergency preparedness and operating from a temporary location.  It is a combination of contest, emergency preparedness exercise, and fellowship.

This year, the NWMO ARES Group will be operating from the Plattsburg Fire Protection District station, 105 Bush St. Plattsburg, MO 64477.  We will begin setup around 9AM, and begin operating around Noon.  All are welcome to come and operate, camp out, and enjoy the day.