2023 Monthly Meeting Schedule

We have a tentative schedule of monthly meeting subjects for 2023. Thanks so much for the ideas that came out of the January meeting. For some we have presenters and others we are looking for expertise to either lead the presentation or add expertise. Let us know at kc9unz@arrl.net if you have some expertise to contribute or ideas for the open evenings. Our meetings usually start at 7:00 PM at Space Place, 2300 Park Street, Madison and we usually offer a hybrid option for unable to come. The Zoom connection information in unique for each meeting and will be emailed to Dane/Iowa county ARES/RACES members about a week before the meeting. If you need the zoom information and do not receive the email please send a request with your Call Sign to kc9unz@arrl.net.

  • Feb 23: Winlink – Jeff
  • Mar 30: Understanding Weather Radar and how it’s used in Skywarn – Chad
  • Apr 27: J-pole Show and tell and Build project
  • May 25: Tabletop Exercise
  • Jun 29: Cross-Banding how and why – Luke
  • Jul 27: Dane County EOC Visit (if it is ready)
  • Aug 31: Station setup for public service and emergency (outside show and tell)
  • Sep 28: Visit a Hospital (the new UW Radio room should be ready?)
  • Oct 26: TBD
  • Nov 30: TBD
  • Dec 28: TBD

Save the Date: SIMCOM 2023

SIMCOM 2023 – May 3-5

The SIMCOM Planning team is working on SIMCOM 2023 activities. Please plan on joining us for a 2 days of field training, in the Wisconsin Emergency Management East Central and West Central regions (exact locations TBD), focusing on communications. Watch for signup in early March 2023.

Results From January 2023 meeting

Dane ARES folk met in a hybrid meeting on January 26 at Space Place and Zoom. The major agenda from the meeting was to find out what members felt should be important about our work this year. We split into groups and discussed and then came back together to share results.

We also requested that each Ham that is interested in public service through ARES/RACES for 2023 send a message to KC9UNZ indicating so. This is a messaging activity as well. You can send your message, preferably using an ICS213 form one of 3 ways.

  • Winlink – to KC9UNZ
  • Voice Message during one of our Wednesday Net Meetings
  • Fill out an ICS 213 and hand it to Jeff at one of our in-person meetings

You can find links to forms below. For further instructions please take a look at the link to the notes from the meeting.

Attached here are the notes from the meeting.

Here is an example of a Confirmation Winlink Message

Here is a link to the official ICS213 form.

Dane/Iowa ARES/RACES January Meeting

We’ll be meeting on Jan 26 at 7:30. It will be a hybrid meeting, in person at Space Place with a Zoom option if you can’t or don’t feel comfortable joining us. More info to come. If you have not received your email invitation which includes the Zoom connection information please send a note including your call sign to KC9UNZ@arrl.net

55th Annual Governor’s Conference on Emergency Management & Homeland Security

Save the Date!

Mark your calendars for the 2023 Governor’s Conference on Emergency Management & Homeland Security, February 27 – March 1, at the Madison Marriott West in Middleton.

The future will bring new challenges to everyone who serves their community. In 2023, the Governor’s Conference on Emergency Management and Homeland Security continues to evolve by providing multiple tracks to explore how different aspects of our field intersect. Coming together at the 2023 Conference is only the beginning of putting us on track for the future together.

Find additional information on the conference website and watch for registration to open soon.

Whether you serve through communications, health, the private sector, emergency response or homeland security, the 2023 WEM Conference is set to inspire and motivate you as we all head towards the future. We look forward to seeing you in February!

Next In-person meeting of ARES RACES – October 27, 2022 – 7:30 PM – Updated

We will meet this week at the office of Wisconsin Emergency Managment at 2400 Wright Street, Madison, WI 53704. I met with Paul, W9CBJ on March 5, 2020 to prepare for us all to go up and tour the facility but, you all remember what happened immediatly after that. We are going to try again. Paul will be sending me information about parking and entry into the facility. We’ll be parking across the street and walking through the gate but I’ll give you more information in a follow up email. This will essentially be an in-person only event BUT I will see what I can do about a remote connection on my phone. If you are on the email list you should have already received this announcement. If not please sign up here: http://eepurl.com/gTS4Rf. I’ll send out details in a follow up email.

Getting in to WEM!

Two things to update.

  • How we’ll meet and get in to WEM and
  • Zoom details if you are unable to join us.

First: Paul, W9CBJ will meet us at the gate. We wil park across street to east of SEOC (yellow building #901) and he will meet us at walk in gate on east side of fence line and we’ll walk in. We will meet at 7:30. Since Paul will be walking us in please try to be on time.

Second: If you are unable to join us in person I will try to do a Zoom meeting once we get started. You should be able to sign on to zoom before me and I’ll start the meeting on my phone once we get started. The Zoom connection information was attached to the email I sent out this morning. If you did not receive it please send me a note with your Call SIgn at kc9unz@arrl.net and I’ll email it along.

NOAA Weather Reports over email (WinLink)

I discovered recently that there is a set of commands that you can place in email to request a weather forecast for your area. It is a set of FTP instructions that the NOAA server will interpret from your email text and then send you the requested file which in this case would be a weather forecast.

In the TO field enter: NWS.FTPMail.OPS@noaa.gov

The subject is not important and you can enter anything

For the Body of the email you enter a series of commands. For Dane County Weather this will get the Dane County forecast by return email. Remove everything else from the body. Don’t enter the lines

open
cd data
cd forecasts
cd zone
cd wi
get wiz063.txt
quit

Hit send and in a few moments you will receive the forecast.

There are forecasts from all over the country. To see values for your area (see the “063” above) go to https://www.weather.gov/pimar/PubZone and scroll to your state. You will find numeric values for each county.

To get the full file name that would go after the “get” Command go here: https://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov/data/
Then click on forecasts, click on zone, click on your state, and scroll down until you find the file name with your County Number. In our case we are looking for 063 and scrolling toward the bottom you will find the file named wiz063.txt. That is what goes after the “get” command.

Have fun. This little trick could be useful while using WinLink.