Mike,

I read your message encouraging AREDN as a possible mode to use in the planned SET drill to take place on Oct. 4. I looked you up on QRZ and saw you live in Agawam, the very town of concern to me.  In the 19 years I have been licensed, I have been involved in ARES, but only deployed for actual emergency communication three times, after an ice storm in 2008, and after a severe snow storm in 2012. From 2012 until 2021 I was the emergency management director for the town of Shelburne. In that capacity I attended many planning meetings and drills organized by the Franklin Regional Counsel of Governments (FRCOG), Western Mass Homeland Security agency, CERT, and MRC. Early in the game I read about WINLINK, learned how to use it, and practiced using it for several years until I got frustrated by how difficult it can be to make a solid contact with a WINLINK server. I then heard about the Narrow Band Emergency Message System (NBEMS) and made it a point to participate in nets originating in New Hampshire, New York State, and Pennsylvania. Between WINLINK and NBEMS, I find it much more satisfying to join weekly nets where I can test how much power it takes for me to make contact, and how well I can hear other stations. This is a feature that, so far as I know, was only in the last few years made available by weekly WINLINK tests, which are not nets, but at least help test your capability.

When AREDN was announced by the league as the newest idea in emergency communications, I read some of the literature, saw pictures of the expensive equipment used in urban areas, and decided it would not be useful in rural western Mass. I have seen you post several messages on the topic, the most recent one suggesting its

use during the SET.  No ARES members in Franklin County, and probably few here in Hampshire County, where I now live, can  afford the expense implied by those pictures.  Yet the SET drill raises an old question, which still bothers me: how do you pass urgent traffic to the Region 3 MEMA office in Agawam?  I know there used to be good amateur radios in the radio room there. I and Charlie Dunlap, K1II, spent some effort about ten years ago to have that equipment put back to use, and for a few years Frank Morrisino was allowed to go there to practice using that equipment.

When the covid pandemic struck, I received a report that the Region 3 staff of MEMA decided to disassemble the radio equipment in order to use the room for storage, and that the equipment is still not useable. If this is true, how do we in the northern end of the valley send urgent messages when telephone and internet service is not available? In real life, this problem actually occurred during Tropical Storm Irene in 2011.  Does the AREDN system do anything to help solve this problem without requiring a big investment of time and money?  If so, I would be interested in learning more.  If not, I might have to send you messages to carry by hand over to the MEMA office as the only way to make contact.