The past few weeks have had many opportunities. You know those, the boss shows up and says “I have an opportunity for you.” Our ARES group has been the recipient of that statement lately.

The ARES Nets have had a ginormous (yes, it’s a word – I heard it on TV) level of check ins, and we continue to give operators a chance to try out as Net Control and continuing to raise our level of capability. Our MESH group continues to amaze with the new techniques and methods to use radio, computers and electronic devices. Think Mars rovers, just smaller.

The AECs are planning for May and July training sessions. May will include a discussion of HF operations, so be sure to gather up any questions you have about operations, equipment and how-to’s. Our panel of experts will try to shed some electrons on the topic.

At the end of April we participated in the North Texas Section ARES Spring Exercise. I need to apologize right up front on this one. It was the first time I had the opportunity to be involved in such an event and didn’t communicate the particulars to everyone as well as I should have. That said, we did have over 15 participants, held a local 2 meter net, made contacts on Winlink to McKinney, Regional Operations and MARS stations. We also had a more than robust HF level of participation, meeting all the goals set for the exercise. Next time I promise to do a better job of sharing the frequencies, times and requirements for the exercise with the overall group to raise our effectiveness. We did experience a failure of a repeater during the event and everyone handled that very well! Actually, it was not a failure but a mistakenly-pushed button on the repeater controller by a repairman working on other collocated radio equipment. It was not discovered until the night before and was fixed by noon the day of the event, just after we finished.

We have more opportunities coming. Memorial Day weekend will see ARES working with the Grayson County OEM in support of a large public event called Life Light near Bells. A lot of details are to be worked out. As the plan unfolds I will advise you as needed. In June the first-ever Scout Camp CERT team will graduate at Camp James Ray and ARES will participate, offering radio communications. I hope you will have a chance to work this, if it’s like other graduations in the past it’ll be a lot of fun and good experience. I can’t help it – “Be Prepared.”

And then later in June there is ARRL’s Field Day. I hope you will support it and look to GCARC to lead the way on that planning. This event is another great opportunity to enjoy this hobby we call Amateur Radio.

Thank you for all you do, your interest and work to make ARES a viable tool to support the communities in which we live.

73
Rick K5ECX