Emergency Coordinator – Dane and Iowa County ARES and RACES

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.

Bike the Barns 2026

Bike the Barns 2026 will ride on September 20, 2026. In the meantime you can find their website at: https://www.csacoalition.org/bike-the-barns

Dairyland Dare 2026

The Dairyland Dare 2026 will ride on August 1, 2026. In the meantime their website can be found at: https://www.dairylanddare.com/

Horribly Hilly Hundreds 2026

In 2026 the Horribly Hilly Hundreds will ride on June 13, 2026. More Information will be added as it becomes available. In the meantime you can follow their website at: https://www.friendsofbluemound.org/horribly-hilly-hundreds-bike-ride/

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.

Overview of how the net will be conducted: https://fillian.net/2025setoverview
Net frequencies (ICS205): https://fillian.net/2025setfreq
Net Script: https://fillian.net/2025setscript
Net log: https://fillian.net/2025setlog (this only includes the MARA15 log – I’ll correct this soon)
Map of Contacts: https://fillian.net/2025setmap

In-Person meeting – September 24, 2025 at Dane County EOC

We will meet in person on Wednesday (or virtually if you can’t make it) on September 24, 2025 at 7:00 PM at the Dane County Emergency Operations Center at 2982 Kapec Rd, Fitchburg, WI 53719, USA

We expect to participate in this year’s SET (Simulated Emergency Test) on October 4 at 1:00 pm. We’ll discuss our plans. We hope to include the EOC, some hospitals and folk at home or on the road.

There will be no Net Meeting on that night.

For those of you who can’t attend in person, the virtual connection information has been sent out in an email. If you haven’t received the email please send a note to kb9orn@gmail.com.

Activation: Milwaukee Flooding Damage Assessment

We have officially been requested by Emergency Management and the IMT to assist with damage assessment. We are looking for ARES members to assist Tomorrow 8/12 and Wed 8/13 from 7AM until 5PM, or as much of that time as possible. Time assignment is 7AM at the command post in Glendale to receive training. Operations are then from 8AM-5PM. We will be teamed up with others to form strike teams to conduct the surveys. we should expect to download the survey1-2-3 app on our phones. The command post where we will be trained is the Glendale Fire Station #2, 5901 N. Milwaukee River Pky.

Please let me know at me@k9unz.me if and what days you are able to activate.

No July 2025 In-Person Meeting

It is summer. We are busy. Many of us will be working Dairyland Dare on August 2, so we won’t be having our in-person meeting on the last Wednesday of July. We’ll have our regularly scheduled Weekly Net at 8pm on the MARA “15” repeater. See you on the radio!

Dane/Iowa ARES/RACES Nets during Field Day

During ARRL Field Day exercises this year we will be exercising the frequencies on our ARES Communication Plan. We will conduct a series of Nets starting at 4:00 PM on Saturday, June 28. If all goes according to plan we should be done by just after 4:30. I have a document outlining the times and purposes of each net. We would like to see how we propagate both with our repeaters as well as with Simplex frequencies. If you are available on Saturday at 4 please plan on joining us.

The plan and timing as well as the ICS205 can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wNo8SmguZ6o-fQ93Kqa8Nz1hjWjqYvaIv9BUT_mBCZ4/edit?usp=sharing

Let me know if you have any questions at me@k9unz.me (k9unz@arrl.net)

73,

Jeff

Severe Weather Reporting

I admit, even after a number of training sessions, I am still a little (just a little) uncertain what to report and what is important. I learned this week that the Sullivan Committee which supports the teams of storm spotters for NOAA in Milwaukee, whose area includes Dane and Iowa Counties. In addition to a who lot of interesting links and information (see http://www.sulcom.org/) there is a form that lists the types of weather events in order of importance that we report. It is worth a look see and worth printing a few copies to keep in your storm spotter notebook (you do have a storm spotter notebook don’t you). Please click the image/link below for a copy of the form.

http://www.sulcom.org/summer_procedures/sullivan_net/report.pdf