Calm Before The Storm?

Howdy,

It’s the time of year we expect to start seeing Mother Nature begin to throw us a few weather makers that involve SKYWARN activations. We will be reviewing procedures for those on the 24th at our ARES training session. It’s been quite a while since we have had an activation so I hope you will come to this session. It will be at a different location: on the 2nd floor of the Grayson County Courthouse in the District Disaster Committee Situation Room right beside the elevator doors. It’s an appropriate location as this room will be involved if we have a “Situation” in our area. Come on out that evening at 7pm, get a refresher on our SKYWARN operations and see what this facility is all about.

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Was That February That Just Went By?

What a great day! We had close to thirty folks involved in our SET on the 7th. Everybody worked well, your systems worked well, the goals were achieved and it was beautiful spring like day.

The nets were successful on all the local repeaters and the simplex net allowed us to verify operational issues, mostly the same ones we knew of. Winlink had a couple of challenges but they were overcome and our messages made it to all recipients and proper replies were received. We involved our Local Red Cross, Boy Scout Camp James Ray, our County EOC operations via Winlink and EchoLink, as well as the Denton County system, and even had our ARRL Section involved in the messaging process. Shelters and command posts were set up and made operational. Y’all are just awesome!!

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IMPORTANT: Repeater Changes

PLEASE NOTE: Effective Monday, February 9, 2015, the W5RVT repeater (147.000 MHz) is the primary repeater used for Grayson County ARES and SKYWARN communications.

The W5RVT repeater settings have not changed:
Frequency: 147.000 MHz
Offset: Positive (+600 KHz)
PL Tone: 100.0

If W5RVT fails, the backup repeater is W5COP (147.280 MHz).