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Washington County ARES, call sign WN1EOC, works with local officials and the ARRL - the national association for amateur radio - to train, prepare, and provide emergency backup communications and publice service communications when needed.
A Bike Maine event is scheduled for September 11 - 12, 2021. Ham Radio operators are needed for both days for designated rest stops and chase vehciles. Mark Burgess, K1HF, is coordinating the ham radio support and will need 4 or 5 volunteers on each day, so if you could help on either or both days, please email him: n1jzv at midmaine dot com.
Sep 11 will include both a 35 and a 75-mile loop. Rest stops will include Machiasport Town Office, Cutler, Whiting, and Patrick Lake. Sep 12 will include a 65-mile loop with rest stops at Addison Town Office and Jonesport Library.
WCARES is coordinating a special ten-meter ground-wave net on Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 1830 (6:30PM) on or near 28.394 Mhz USB. The primary goal is to have fun, while the secondary goal is to see if there are enough active hams in Washington County to provide coverage from Calais to Steuben. Please spread the word among Washington County hams. Phil N1EP will initially call up the net using the WCARES callsign WN1EOC, and then will pass it to a couple other hams in key locations for them to take check-ins as well. At the top of the hour, at 1900 hours, we can all change to the K1HF Marshfield repeater 146.775- PL 192.8, for the weekly Maine Ham Radio Society net!
October 6 - 7, 2021 is the Synergy Challenge 2021, a disaster exercise conducted by Canadian emergency management personnel and amateur radio operators to test responses to possible incidents at a nuclear power plant in New Brunswick. The Maine Emergency Management Agency will be involved, to some degree, in the exercise, as will the Washington County Emergency Management Agency - WNEMA (our served agency). As such, WCARES will participate, as we did three years ago. The extent of amateur radio participation in this year's exercise is not yet known. However, WCARES plans to staff the EOC radio room at WNEMA, and have other operators on standby from their homes. More details will be coming soon.
Maine's ARES annual Simulated Emergency Test - SET - will be held on Saturday, October 9, 2021 and will test many aspects of our EmComm toolbox, including Winlink. If you have not used Winlink before, it is a very useful EmComm tool and also fun and valuable mode when camping or other in activities when you have no access to the Internet. Using Winlink, you can access nodes from outside your region, where there is Internet, and send and retrieve emails over the amateur radio airwaves! Of course, these emails sent and received over the airwaves must abide by the FCC regulations applicable to amateur radio.