Meeting – Dane and Iowa County ARES and RACES

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.

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

No In Person Meeting May 28

There will be NO in-person meeting on the last day of the month this month, May 2025, however the normal ARES/RACES Net Meeting will be held at 8PM on the 28th as it is every week on the MARA “15” repeater.

There WILL be a net this week – March 26

As part of our becoming familiar with the EOC Amateur radio room, we WILL have our regular net at 8:00 pm this week (March 26). If you are unable to be with us at the EOC for our regularly scheduled in-person meeting, turn on your radio as you normally would and join us for the Net Meeting. It will be part of our demo of the equipment.

Dane/Iowa ARES/RACES In-Person Meeting Feb 26

We are meeting in person this week at the Dane County EOC for our monthly in-person meeting. Tom Kucharski, W9TJK, who coordinates Amateur Radio volunteer communicators for the National Weather Service Milwaukee/Sullivan (https://www.weather.gov/mkx/), WI under whose umbrella we reside, will join us to describe how they work with counties in our area. When reviewing the role of Amateur radio communicators in this part of Wiesconsin one of the most frequent concerns that comes up in conversations is related to weather events. We don’t get hurricanes but we get weather which has consistently been a concern on the county and state level. We will meet both in person and virtually on Wednesday evening March 26 at 7PM at the Dane County EOC, 2982 Kapec Rd, Fitchburg, WI 53719. See below for the virtual connection information.

Please also consider these weather related events.

Dark Skies Severe Weather Seminar
- 9:00 am – 3:30pm at Madison College on March 8th. for more information: https://sites.google.com/view/midwestsstrc-darkskies/home
Additional Spotter Training Opportunities https://www.weather.gov/mkx/spotter-schedule
- Iowa County – April 2
  - 1:30 & 6:30, 109 E Leffler St, Dodgeville, WI 53533, USA
- Dane County – April 16
  - 1pm – Fitchburg-Dane County, 2982 Kapec Rd, Fitchburg, WI 53719, USA
  - 6pm – Marshall-Dane County, 119 Industrial Dr, Marshall, WI 53559

Connection information for In Person Meeting

We do not publicize connection information in this space. If you are interested in joining us for this event and need the connection information please email kc9unz@arrl.net and include your name and call sign.

Dane/Iowa County ARES/RACES Meeting January 29

Wow, the last Wednesday of the month is near!

This month will be Winlink, winlink, winlink. We’ll show you a bunch of stuff on winlink…

Setting Up a WinLink Account
Start with Telnet Sessions
Creating a message
Sending/Receiving
Using Forms
Send/Reply using ICS213
Using email (//WL2K)
Creating/Using A Tactical Call
RF Winlink
VARA FM
P2P VARA or Packet
Winlink Nets

If you have a laptop that you use (or plan to use) with Winlink bring it along and join the fun.

We’ll meet at 7 pm on Wednesday Jan 29 at the Dane County EOC at 2982 Kapec Rd. Fitchburg, WI 53719

If you are unable to join us in person you can join us virtually using the Google Meet. Even if you can’t be there, if you have winlink installed you’ll be able to participate from home as well! If you need the Google Meet connection information and you didn’t get the email notification, drop a note to kc9unz@arrl.net, include your call sign and name and I’ll send it along.

See you on Wednesday.

Reminder: No In-Person Meetings Nov, Dec 2024

Due to the holidays we will NOT be having any in person meetings for the rest of 2024. We WILL, however, have our regularly scheduled Net Meetings on Wednesday’s at 8:00 PM on the MARA 147.150 repeater.

No In-person Meeting July 31, 2024

We will NOT be meeting in person on the last Wednesday this month, instead we will hold our regularly scheduled FM Net meeting at 8PM on Wednesday on the MARA 147.150 repeater PL (or CTCSS or TSQL) 123.0.

April 24, 2024 Monthly Meeting

ARES: What is our Superpower?

We will meet this Wednesday, April 24 at 7pm at the Dane County EOC at 2982 Kapec Road, Fitchburg. Please use the west door (facing Kapec Rd) to enter the building. If you are unable to attend in person please send an email to KC9UNZ@arrl.net for Google Meet information to attend virtually.

I’d like to review the purpose of ARES and how ARES fits into the other HAM activities as well as our served agencies here in Dane/Iowa county and get all your opinions on how we think about our mission here. What makes ARES distinctive? What is our Superpower? This piggy-backs on to a number of conversations I’ve had with organisations around the county and State of late and some of the concerns that have cropped up.

Dane/Iowa County ARES/RACES Membership Meeting
Wednesday, April 24 · 7:00 – 8:30pm
Time zone: America/Chicago
Google Meet joining info:
Request connection information from kc9unz@arrl.net