[KYHAM] Annual Ky ARES Program Report For 2004

[Ron Dodson]

In January of 2000, I began a policy of reporting to the amateurs
of the Kentucky Section, our Amateur Radio Emergency Service
(ARES) program’s activity for the previous year.  There is no
ARRL requirement that an SEC do this. However I feel it is
important to our program and to amateur radio as a whole that you
are aware of just how valuable our service is to our communities
and the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Aside from this, our activity
is our contribution to the national effort to “pay the bills” and
keep amateur radio in existence by justifying our use of all of
the bands which we enjoy daily. In the opening section of Part 97
of the FCC Rules and Regulations, we see that amateur radio is a
“SERVICE” whose existence is for the public good and not merely
our private playground.
http://www.arrl.org/FandES/field/regulations/news/part97/

This is my sixth year in making this report. I thank each and
every amateur who has dedicated themselves to the success of this
program over these past years.  The credit is more yours than
mine as I could not have done all this without you!  Special
thanks to our KyHam webmaster, Pat, KD4PWL for his assistance in
the quantitative analysis of numbers of the previous years and
the insight they provide.

MEMBERSHIP:

Since December of 1998, 374 additional amateurs have joined the
Ky ARES program.  Starting with 711 members in the last month of
1998, we ended 2004 with a membership roll of 1,085 an increase
of 9.3% for 2004 alone and a 6 year increase of roughly 34.5%.
Though some years were higher or lower, this reflects an average 
growth of about 6.8% per anum.

TRAINING:

On November 16, 2003, Assistant SEC, Ron Goodpaster, AG4TY
unveiled the new, FREE, Ky ARES Condensed Emergency
Communications training course. Since its inception we have had
75 graduates from the full 3 level course. A total of 84 Ky
Amateurs have completed Level I, 76 have also completed the
second level. Please encourage new hams to become involved in
ARES.  Ky ARES members, new and old, should strive to improve
their level of EMCOMM proficiency and knowledge by taking
advantage of the free training materials which are offered at
http://kyham.net/emcomm/training/
as well as the EMI free Independent Study Courses at
http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IS/crslist.asp and the ARRL’s
Continuing Education courses at http://www.arrl.org/cce/  .  The
better trained everyone is, the more useful they will be to their
team and to their served agencies in the field.  In the first
seventy or so years of public service, amateur radio mainly
concerned itself with natural and nuclear threats only.  Today,
it is a new ballgame and we must add the threats of terrorist
attack and hazardous chemical accidents to our repertoire.
Regardless of the mistaken opinion of a few, there is no such
thing as too much training!

Many groups took part in their community’s exercises and drills
in 2004. The biggest operation in 2004 was the 4 day
multi-agency/multi-jurisdictional exercise which simulated the
reoccurance of the 1811-12 New Madrid Seismic Zone quakes in late 
March. During the exercise amateurs activated radios in EOC's in 
western Ky., a forward EOC at Greenville, Ky and the state EOC. 
Representatives from the US 1st ARMY, Ky National Guard, FEMA and 
other agencies got a first hand look at how important amateur 
radio would be in the early hours and days in getting information 
in and out of such a disaster area.  A much larger scale exercise 
is now being planned for 2007 involving all states in the Central 
US Earthquake Consortium (CUSEC) and amateur radio will likely 
once again play a role.

Other major exercise efforts were with the Metropolitan Medical
Response System (MMRS) and Chemical Stockpile Emergency 
Preparedness Program (CSEPP) and other EM affiliated efforts.
Public service operations were for community parades, car shows, 
fund raisers, community warning siren testing and other events of 
benefit to the public at large. All of these were great training 
opportunities.

Ky ARES ACTIVITY:

Each month I collect reports of previous month activity from
local groups, EC’s and DEC’s which are compiled into the Section
ARES Activity Report. This section report is sent to ARRL HQ on
or before the tenth of the current month. It is then added to the
reports from all other ARRL sections and is then used by ARRL to
justify the continued need for the amateur radio service to the
FCC, Congress and all of the commercial interests who covet our
frequency bands for private enterprise.

I am pleased to tell you that monthly reporting over the past 
five years in the Ky Section has increased dramatically!  From an 
average of 12.25 reports/month in 1999 we now have a monthly 
averrage of 20.333 with a peak in May 2004 of 30 reports 
received! I congratulate all of you in this important 
accomplishment and ask that we all redouble our efforts to report 
any activity of nets, public service and emergency operations 
which involve amateur radio. The more you report shows that your 
local group is active and working toward fulfilling our Part 97 
obligations.  I realize that life gets hectic at times and it is 
easy to let the monthly report slide by forgotten in the day to 
day world.  This is why I try to post friendly reminders on the 
section’s listservs that I have access to each month.  Reporting 
now in 2004 was easier than ever with both the DEC and EC Monthly 
Report and the Public Service  Activity Report at this URL:
http://kyham.net/emcomm/ares/reports.html

In 2004, we, the amateurs of the Kentucky Section, reported a
total of 931 nets or 8,287.11 man hours.  We had 30 Public
Service Events totaling 1,497.5 man hours and 78 Emergency
Communications Responses totaling 2,167.7 man hours.  This adds
up to 1,039 on the air operations and 11,952.31 man hours. The
majority of communications emergencies were SkyWarn related (68)
operations and in many cases continuing on into the aftermath of
severe weather for damage assessments and other duties. 46 of
these activations occurred during the month of May 2004 when we
had wave after wave of tornadic episodes.

WINLINK 2000 was another new addition to our toolkit in 2004.
Scott Thile, K4SET was appointed as Assistant Section Emergency
Coordinator for Digital Communications in August of 2004 to
oversee the development of a WINLINK network in our Commonwealth.
This will enable what amounts to e-mail messaging over amateur 
radio which can interface directly with the worldwide web and 
allow emergency managers to send e-mail BOTH OUT OF AND INTO 
disaster areas to any other WINLINK or regular e-mail address in 
the world. We tested the early stages of this network during the 
October 2-3 Simulated Emergency Test and found that it worked as 
planned even when a portion of the chain was removed, redundancy 
still passed the messages in seconds.  The network information is 
continually updated and can be found at:
http://kyham.net/emcomm/ares/digital/systems.html WATCH IT GROW!

IN SUMMARY (The BIG Picture):

Over the past 6 years, Kentucky amateurs have been involved in
6,603 nets, public service events and emergency operations!
These total up to 166,332.5 man hours of efforts toward public
service, preparedness and response efforts for the citizens of
Kentucky!  What is startling is the realization that if only one
person were capable of working 24 hours per day, 7 days every
week for 365 days each year, it would take him or her 18.974
years to equal this amount of labor!!!

This is even more startling if you consider it likely that some 
UNREPORTED activity took place during the period, which, if 
reported, would have made these totals even higher!  If you think 
about this, you will come to realize just how important that 
reporting your local activity can be no matter how large or small 
an operation you had for the month.  Let’s now take this one step 
further… Add (in your mind) the cost burden this would have 
placed on the tax payers of Kentucky to have had to PAY for these 
communications support services in both labor AND equipment 
(radios, repeaters, digipeaters and other hardware)! Once having 
done all this, you can now see how the ARRL uses this data when 
this is figured on a nation-wide scale to “balance the scales” in 
Washington and keep amateur radio alive for us all!

My Assistant SEC's, Ron Goodpaster, AG4TY, Scott Thile, K4SET 
and I wish to thank and congratulate you all on this 
accomplishment.  I have been honored to serve you during this 6 
year period and hope that our joined efforts will continue to 
grow in the future. With our membership intertwining with CERT 
Teams, Metropolitan Medical Response System (MMRS) and other 
preparedness efforts in the Commonwealth, there appears to be no 
limit to our opportunities for service yet ahead.

73,
Ron Dodson, KA4MAP
Ky Section Emergency Coordinator
Ky Amateur Radio Emergency Service (KyARES)


"Note: This report is authorized for use or quote in club
newsletters and other interested listserv's not CC'ed above as
required.


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