[SJRA-Members] K2AA is operating the Pandemic Class 7E - Extended area operations

[ken at k2wb.com]

Dear Fellow Field Day Operations,

 

My name is Ken K2WB of the South Jersey Radio Association (aka K2AA & SJRA)
Field Day Chairperson,

 

The ARRL Field Day is an emergency preparedness drill. With this current
"Emergency" that we find ourselves, does not fit the types of emergencies we
have been preparing for. With social distancing rules and paranoia the SJRA
finds itself in an interesting situation.

 

Our FD operation brings out over 60 people to help, setup, operate and take
down. Our operation shelters would easily violate the 6 foot rule. Lastly
our state (New Jersey) would have to drop the rule of not allowing public
gatherings of more than 10 people. This all has to happen prior to Field
Day.  Even if we are allowed to congregate in public we think that a lot of
our support would not show up trying to be safe.

 

The SJRA determined that we would not learn anything on how to communicate &
coordinate as a group in this type of emergency just by operating as bunch
of 1D or 1A stations listing our club affiliation.

 

Here is our plan B:

*	Operate as (in our case) 7E. We are not going to follow the 1000 ft
circle rule but will follow the 175mi Radius club rule instead.
*	Coordinate operating as K2AA on 7 bands and modes from as many
member home stations as possible. All stations would have written permission
to operate as K2AA from the trustee and will follow all FCC rules and
regulations.
*	All transmitters and receivers will be powered by emergency power
(which keeps us in the "E" category). Still using your home antennas,
shelter and allows us to contact all station categories. In accordance to
the Field Day "E" category rule.
*	Use our Repeater and Zoom to coordinate operations throughout the 24
hours.
*	Get as many bonus points as practical, keeping the spirit of the
Field Day.

 

Our 7E submission to the ARRL will clearly state that we purposely broke the
1000ft rule and to use our log as a check log.

 

Things to know: N1MM supports large area linked logs (just like a LAN) which
will make it easier to see what is going on. We have done some preliminary
testing and found it stable for 4 days with only a couple of computers in 2
locations 40 miles apart. It is our plan to increase and test more stations
prior to Field Day.

 

I would be interested if others could share your ideas or plans. So far this
is the best we could come up with. If there is enough interest I would be
happy to host a WebEx meeting for further discussion or share what we
learned.

 

We hope to work all of you during Field Day. (7E SNJ)

 

Good luck and be safe!

 

Please feel free to forward this email to other clubs that you think would
be interested in this idea or may have ideas of their own.

 

73's

de Ken K2WB

 <mailto:ken at k2wb.com> ken at k2wb.com

 











 <http://www.sjra.org/> www.sjra.org

 <http://www.w2ea.net/> www.w2ea.net

 <http://www.packratvhf.com/> www.packratvhf.com

 <http://www.arrl.org/> www.arrl.org

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 4351 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/sjra-members/attachments/20200520/001a8076/attachment.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 3316 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/sjra-members/attachments/20200520/001a8076/attachment-0001.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image004.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 3890 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/sjra-members/attachments/20200520/001a8076/attachment-0002.jpg>