This week was Severe Weather Awareness Week in Wisconsin. April begins the ramp-up in temps and mixing of cold air from Canada with warm moist air from the south. While there ARE tornadoes in winter months from time to time, according the Wisconsin climatology records – MOST of them occur in May, June, July and August. Thus the timing of the awareness week.
As part of the Outagamie County (Appleton, Wisconsin area) A.R.E.S. group I participated in three events this week. One had enough humor in it to write about. The other two were just good ‘ole ham radio stuff… First the other two.
On Thursday there was a state-wide simulated tornado event / drill. As part of that exercise there was a simulated SkyWarn ham radio net activation for trained storm spotters such as myself. I happened to be driving back from lunch with Justin (K0RPL) in Appleton, WI. I heard the net activating and so I checked in and advised net control that my A.P.R.S. tracker was active. Net control responded that my APRS track was a good one. Once I got back to work I checked out of the net. I think that net control appreciated having someone on APRS to track to practice with. For those new to APRS, it is a little tracker about the size of a silver dollar (GPS sensor) and a cigarette package (data converter known technically as TNC or Terminal Node Controller). This device sends my GPS coordinates and speed and direction, etc. data out over ham radio frequency to listening stations. Those stations take the data and send it down the line to the internet servers. My track is then instantly displayable by anyone on the internet via www.APRS.FI as long as they know my FCC callsign. I am tracked as AB9NN-9. The AB9NN is my FCC call sign (for ham radio) and the -9 signifies that the transmissions are from my car. I might use -7 if I were on foot, etc…
That evening there was a siren test. I wasn’t going to participate but was just finishing dinner when it started on the police scanner. YUP – I can get 2 meter ham radio on my regular police scanner! You can get one for around $100 or less at places like Radio Shack. I wandered out to the car and checked in. Turned out there was a siren near our home in Appleton, WI that had not been checked. I wasn’t quite sure where it was but managed to get to within a couple of blocks of it when it went off. That sure helped me locate it exactly!
Saturday we had another siren test. I had figured on checking another siren near our house but when I got into the truck and checked in to the net I learned that it was already assigned. Drats! Well – I looked at the list of sirens and found one location that I recognized so I volunteered for that one. It was near a school and I found it quickly. Probably too quickly. The sirens were set to go off at noon and here I was all ready to go and it was only 11:33. What to do? Drive around a bit? Nah – waste of gas. I figured I’d listen to the ham radio net operations. Well, everyone checked in and then the net was silent waiting for the sirens to go off – so that got old quickly. OK – time to check-out the HF bands. I was figuring I would go to 20 meters and see if there was any DX. I changed modes from memory mode to VFO mode on my 857d radio but we had decided to lower the ATAS-120 screwdriver (motorized) antenna when we put it into the garage the other night. We left it on 6 meters (50 Mhz or so). Since I had time and was not driving I decided to spend some time manually tuning through the band. To my surprise I quickly found a number of ham radio operators working some good 6 meter ham radio contacts. There was a 6 meter band opening! The 6 meter band comes alive spring, summer and fall and then goes to sleep for the winter. It has to do I believe with the tilt of the earth and charging of different levels of the atmosphere to the point that our ham radio 6 meter signals reflect off of it and back down to earth far away… So I was able to make my first 6 meter contact – that was fun and worth a blog post of itself… but here comes the funny part…
While I was on 6 meters I notice a young lad dressed in tree / grass like camo diving onto the grass across the street from me. Every time I looked away he covered his head! It was a cold day and the grass was wet – but he laid there for a good 20 minutes or so. I never did find out exactly what he was up to. My theory is that maybe he wondered why this strange truck was parked in his neighborhood and some older guy was watching the school playground (tornado siren, actually) so intently? After the siren sounded I left to drive around the block to verify that all four horns on the stationary siren were working.
On Sunday I will help our Appleton, WI ham radio club provide ham radio communications support to the MS Walk in Appleton. It’s nice to be able to use a skill of mine to help others accomplish the goal of helping people in need!
Stay Radio Active!
Jon, AB9NN-9
http://www.HamRadioResources.com
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- Northeastern Wisconsin and UP of Michigan APRS Coverage Update
- Ham Radio APRS vs iPhone GPS Tracking
- Ham Radio – APRS Education (continued…)
- Ham Radio A.P.R.S. Install Experiences And Insights
- Dedicated A.P.R.S. Radio and Antenna Install
- Ham Radio APRS ARES and MORE!
- Ham Radio and Marathons
- Lake Michigan Area (Michigan / Wisconsin) APRS Coverage
- How To Track Someone With APRS.FI
- ALOHA A.P.R.S. Hams!
