Author Archives: Emergency Coordinator

March 2026 Membership Meeting

Our March In-Person membership meeting will be held on March 25 (2026) at 7PM. This month we will be meeting at the Cross Plains Fire Department, 1501 Bourbon Rd, Cross Plains, WI 53528, which has an Amateur Station. Steve, KC9FKV will introduce us to the station at the fire department and in addition to checking out that station, Kyle, KC9SDK our Wisconsin ARES State Emergency Coordinator will be on hand to tell us what is happening at a state level and answer any questions we might have.

We will NOT be meeting at the Dane County EOC this month.

As usual we will be sending out a reminder with virtual connection information for anyone who is unable to join us in person. You can expect that information about a week before the meeting.

Feb 2026 Membership Meeting – Change of Plans

I realized that I don’t want to step on our PL-259 work or give short shrift to our APRS work.

Soooo….

We will hold the APRS work until a later date. But if we have time I would like to spend a few minutes talking about using AllStar to connect to the MARA “15” repeater. There are Ham purists that might suggest that using the internet to connect to a repeater is cheating but I think it fulfills our “by any means necessary” You’ve heard a number of folks joining us using the AllStar link lately, including me from Connecticut. Let’s also talk about that as well.

See you on Wednesday (2/25/2026). 7:00 pm at the Dane County EOC at 2982 Kapec Rd, Fitchburg, WI.

and for those who cannot be there in person you should have received an email with the virtual connection information, otherwise drop a note to k9unz@arrl.net.

February 2026 General Membership Meeting

Our February meeting will be held on February 25 at the Dane County EOC at 7:00 PM. The Building is behind the KwikTrip and is located at 2982 Kapec Rd. Fitchburg, WI 53719.

Our plan is to demo NVIS (Near Vertical Incidence Skywave), a way to connect to one another at relatively close proximity using HF. Often we need the power of HF for a local incident but HF typically works better for longer distances. NVIS bounces a signal virtually straight up so it will bounce nearly directly down for local traffic.

We also plan to spend some time demo-ing and testing our ability to connect a PL and SO 239 to coax. If you’ve not checked off that capability on your ARES Taskbook, here is a perfect opportunity!

You should receive an email later this weekend with the connection information for those who cannot come in person. If you do not receive that email by Monday please send a note to K9UNZ@arrl.net and let Jeff know.

“Bonus” 10 meter net tonight (Nov 19)


After our usual 2 meter net at 8:00 let’s see how a 10 meter net would work. We need to leave enough time to make the change from 2 meters to 10 meters so let’s plan to start a 10 meter net at 8:30 and see how well we propagate. We’ll plan our frequency so everyone with the proper equipment, technician and above can participate. Jeff, K9UNZ, will be net control (for the 10 meter net, Patrick, NT9A is NC for the 2 meter net this week). We will gather at 28.350 at 8:30 pm and if that frequency is being used we will move to 28.375. This will also be a good opportunity for those who might have trouble checking in on our normal 2 meter net to participate as well.

October 2025 In-Person Meeting

October 29, 2025,  7:00 PM is our next in person meeting of the Dane/Iowa County ARES/RACES team. There will be no Net Meeting on that night. We’ll be meeting at the Dane County Emergency Operations center at 2982 Kapec Rd, Fitchburg, WI 53719. For those who cannot be there in person we will have a virtual connection to the meeting. 

We’ll have a couple agenda items. I have a slide deck that was used for October ARES/RACES Training in the State entitled Volunteerism: What Do Clients Expect from us? I’d like to walk through it and get feedback from the team.  We will also review what 2025 looked like and lessons learned as well as start to get ready for 2026

The virtual connection information for those who can’t be there in person was sent to team members in an email. If you did not receive that information please send an email to kb9orn@gmail.com.

Materials for SET 2025

Starting at 1:00 pm on Oct 4, 2025 Dane/Iowa County ARES/RACES will testing a subset of our activations frequencies, including using the stations at the EOC, Hospitals and operators at home or mobile. For an overview of how the net will be conducted, a list of frequencies (ICS205), the Net Script and to view the log see the links below.