[SMCARA] Succesful ARES Exercise

[Hoyt, Robert R.]

Good Afternoon!

 Yesterday members of the St. Mary's County ARES team participated in the yearly Simulated Emergency Test (SET). The scenario for this year in the MD/DC Section was the day after a tropical storm had come through the area, MD Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) requested status of the water gauges located around the section. We added checking on the county shelters as well to add a little more to the exercise.


The St. Mary's County ARES team met on the air at 0800 for a roll call and to set out for the objective of checking status of the three water gauges and the three shelters in the county. Primary voice communication was on the 147.390 repeater and we also used the 147.195 repeater, which is located close to the Charles County border. There was some interesting challenges finding a couple of the gauges and involved a little detective work and some muddy hikes! We had good comm checks on both repeaters throughout most of the County all the way down to Point Lookout. We also had three hams running APRS during the exercise and I was able to track their location real time on the computer, very cool! At the end of the exercise, most of the participants sent a summary email of their part of the exercise using Winlink.


I would like to say a big thank you to the hams that took time out on a Saturday morning to participate and make for a successful exercise:



Steve: KA3WAP

Chris: KB2SKP

Rachel: KF7AWC

Carlos: N3RDR

Jim: KB1YZ

Jon: N3AK

Neal: AC3CU

Jason: N3YUG

Chuck: W3CEB


Also thanks to Bob, KB3KOW we had exercise inputs from Charles County as well.  The ARES net this coming Thursday will be used to conduct an after action of the exercise, what worked well and what we can improve on.


73, Rob - N2OMC

St. Mary's County EC