OSCAR
Home Page
Owatonna Steele County Amateur Radio 14-Apr-2017

OSCAR News - June, 2Ø11

OSCAR Meeting
The next OSCAR meeting is 11-Jun @ 9:00 AM, the second Saturday of the month. Meetings are held in the meeting room at the Owatonna HyVee, 18th Street @ Oak Avenue.

SKYWARN Meeting
The next SKYWARN meeting is 21-Jun @ 7:00 PM, the third Tuesday of the month. Meetings are held at the Owatonna Fire Station.

Local News
Jerry Rosendahl KCØWPY, Minnesota State Fire Marshal, is now the President of the National Association of State Fire Marshals (NASFM).

Field Day
Double check to be sure you have your equipment ready for Field Day, 25-Jun. Final plans will be discussed at the June meeting. It seems that more often than not Field Day operations is interupted with a real emergency, from car crashes to severe weather. What might it be this year?

Club Call Sign
OSCAR previously recevied permission from Judy Srsen to acquire Charlie's call sign in memorium for the club. Dave WBØVAK and Tom NØUW worked together to apply for the vanity call KØHNY for OSCAR, retiring KCØBXJ. This is a fitting tribute to Charlie, who was a great Elmer to many. The application was submitted to the FCC and we are currently waiting for the approval.

On a related note, Dennis NØRPJ suggested modifying the OSCAR logo to replace the letters "O.S.C.A.R." in the main body of the emblem with the club call sign. The new logo would include KØHNY, as shown at the right. This will be discussed more at the June meeting.

Dennis NØRPJ also had sample jackets from Court Sports at the May meeting. Placing orders were held off until the new club call sign and logo change were approved.

Dayton Video
Couldn't make it to Dayton? Dave WBØVAK sent this YouTube link. I'm sure Dennis NØRPI and Dennis NØRPJ will have some stories to share at the June meeting.

CERT Table Top Drill
CERT completed a table top emergency exercise in April. Formidable Footprint is a free online Emergency Response Tabletop Exercise Series sponsored by Disaster Resistant Communities Group. The exercise is available online about once per month. The exercise in April was based on a Tornado scenario. It was a good opportunity to practice your Incident Management skills.

If you want to see how you might handle the role of an Emergency Manager, there is an online Stop Disasters Game. Sponsored by the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, it has five scenarios (Tsunami, Hurricane, Wildfire, Earthquake, and Flood) and three difficulty levels. With a limited budget and time, the player must manage the community to minimize loss of life and property damage during the impending event.

CERT Training
Steele County CERT is planning a winter training session. Current plans are to begin on 07-Jan-2012. You can learn more about CERT training there.

MS TRAM
Radio operators are needed to help support the MS TRAM tour the week of July 24-29. The tour is spending the night in Owatonna on Jul-25, traveling from Rochester. The group moves on to Austin on Tuesday. Volunteering on Monday or Tuesday would keep your involvement local. Amateur radio operators are requested to help with communications in multiple positions including: rest stops, first aid stations, intersections, support vehicles, and other positions.

Additional information is available at http://www.ms-scram.org. Let Tom NØUW know if you participate in this ARES event.

Waseca Triathlon
The Waseca Triathlon is scheduled for Sunday, 31-Jul. The event includes two courses:

  • Ironman: 1 mile swim, 34 mile bike ride, and 8.8 mile run.
  • Sprint: 1/4 mile swim, 14 mile bike, and 4.4 mile run.
Several OSCAR members supported over 300 participants last year. If the editor's memory is correct, Marv NØFJP ended up running interference between one runner and a dog. Check with Dennis NØRPI for more information.

The Last Line of Defense From ARRL Letter
A forum was held by FEMA in May to discuss communications preparedness for an earthquake scenario. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Craig Fugate made several comments relating to the ability of Amateur Radio to provide a solution when other systems fails. Sound bites describing Amateur Radio include "the ultimate backup", "...when you need Amateur Radio, you really need it."

Later in the forum, Fugate spoke more on Amateur Radio. "During the initial communications out of Haiti, volunteers using assigned frequencies that they are allocated, their own equipment, their own money, nobody pays them, were the first ones oftentimes getting word out in the critical first hours and first days as the rest of the systems came back up," he told the forum. "I think that there is a tendency because we have done so much to build infrastructure and resiliency in all our other systems, we have tended to dismiss that role 'When Everything Else Fails.' Amateur Radio often times is our last line of defense."

You can watch a video of the forum on YouTube. Fugate's remarks begin at 18:55.

Radio Shack
RadioShack was the first place many of us looked for parts in our younger days. Anyone that has completed a construction project might have looked at the nearest store to pick up parts. Most of RadioShack products today are consumer oriented and very little discreet components. RadioShack is now looking for input from builders. There’s a video explaining what they’re looking for as well as placing to add comments.

Archives