[CALV-AUXCOMM] AUXCOM Meeting Summary (the complete email)

[Shawn Donley]

All,


Here's a brief summary of our Sep 17th meeting.


Attendees:

N3AE

KB3SXB

K3UGA

N3PPH

KB3RAN


I've heard back from the following ops regarding their desire to remain in Calvert AUXCOMM (in response to my Aug 31 email request).  

KB3SXB

W3PQS

K3UGA

N3PPH

KB3RAN


REMINDER:  IF I DON'T HEAR BACK FROM YOU BY SEP 30TH, I WILL ASSUME YOU ARE NO LONGER INTERESTED IN PARTICIPATING AND WILL REMOVE YOU FROM THE CALVERT AUXCOMM MEMBERSHIP LIST AND THIS REFLECTOR.


So far, the following ops have provided me with copies of their FEMA training certificates.  I need copies if I am to certify you as Level 2 or above under the new ARRL ARES program rules.


N3PPH

K3UGA



Meeting Discussion:


K3UGA asked if it might be possible to take the ARRL EC-001 class as a group.   I'll have to look into that.  The course is advertised to take 45 hours over 9 weeks, so it might not be something that we can do together in a classroom setting.


I passed around a plan for deployment assignments for the 2019 hurricane season.  I'll post this roster on our AUXCOMM site later today.   https://auxcomm.k3cal.org/


We discussed looking at options to Winlink for VHF/UHF digital communications within the county.   The two options discussed were FLDIGI and the NBEMS wrapper, and OUTPOST.   After some discussion, we decided to explore FLDIGI first.   Taking this a step at a time, we decided to start with bare bones FLDIGI using the MT63-2000L mode which has robust forward error correction and is reasonably fast.


FLDIGI requires a sound card interface to your transceiver (SignaLink or similar), but in a pinch it's possible to hold the rig's microphone up to the computer speaker and the rig's speaker up to the computer's microphone to make it work.


The FLDIGI software and manual can be downloaded from the site below.  For now, all you need is FLDIGI.  The other supporting programs like FLRIG and FLMSG will come later, along with NBEMS.


http://www.w1hkj.com/



A preview of NBEMS can be found at http://www.arrl.org/nbems


The initial plan is to use FLDIGI in the MT63-2000L mode to conduct keyboard to keyboard communications between home QTH's.  Unlike packet, our 146.985 and 444.950 voice repeaters can be used to relay FLDIGI messages.


Request all AUXCOMM members download the latest version of FLDIGI and become familiar with it so we can begin to experiment with it by the end of September or early October.


N3AE

Calvert EC

n3ae at arrl.net








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