Wow… was that a wild 48 hours? And, it wasn’t even real. I can’t imagine the chaos and confusion that would accompany a real world emergency. I’ve spoken to one person who experienced the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing in Oklahoma and he described overwhelming chaos and confusion. Another friend shared with me stories […]
Many of us disconnected our land line phones and have become dependent on our cell phones for communications. Those are really convenient as we take them with us wherever we go and the apps available give us quite a bit of information at our fingertips. But, there are problems with them in case of some […]
The BUTLER COUNTY DIGITAL NET is dedicated to learning and developing digital operating skills and practicing digital traffic handling. Digital communications can become important in an emergency due to a natural disaster or power outage. To support this mission, we focus on three fundamentals: Directed Net protocols, Computer skills, and Digital traffic-handling with NBEMS software. […]
The annual AmRRon T-Rex exercise was conducted April 26-28, 2019. This scenario-based, grid down emergency communications training exercise is an opportunity to test members readiness in the event of a disaster or other emergency. The scenario this year was primarily centered around a cyber attack on PLC’s (programmable logic controllers). These small devices provide computer […]
For this 2019 Field Day project, I wanted to build a 40 Meter inverted V dipole antenna that could be easily deployed in the field. It was designed and tuned for a target frequency of 7.237 Mhz. Using the formula 468 / 7.237=64.66 total length. I added 4′ for connection winds and a little slack […]
Disasters are unpredictable and can strike in the middle of winter as likely as in the summer months. Each year the WFDA (Winter Field Day Association) sponsors a special event enabling ham radio operators to enhance their skills and procedures in cold weather conditions. Preparedness is the key to an effective response during any event […]