ARES Web Links

The following links may be useful to you in connection with your ARES activities:

Southern Peninsula Emergency Communications System (SPECS)

Santa Clara County ARES/RACES

ARRL Santa Clara Valley Section

Loma Pioneer Repeater Club

American Radio Relay League (ARRL)

PacFORMS Update for MV CERT - 05-03-21

Mountain View Antenna Drops

Webmaster Phil Henderson (KF6ZSQ@yahoo.com)

Events

150th ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIRE DEPARTMENT CELEBRATION

Sunday, May 19, 2024, 0730-1500

Support our ARES group by marching in the parade celebrating the 150th anniversary
of the fire department.   We are needed to walk in the parade as a group wearing our safety
vests and carrying our HT radios, as well as to help in the volunteer booth we will share with CERTs.
Shifts are: 7:30-11:00 am (booth) and 11:00 am to 3:00 pm (parade and booth.) You can sign up
by adding your name and preferred shift to the spreadsheet URL listed below.

Copy the URL and
Paste it to your browser. (The link did not work here)

https://tinyurl.com/2b8mbjpx (This is a Google Spreadsheet)

For the CERT group column, enter MTV ARES.   Note, it is suggested that you use a desk or labtop
computer for this. If you have trouble, contact Leslie by E-Mail.


MOUNTAIN VIEW ARES ANTENNA PARTY SIGNUP

13 April 2024, 1000 - 1200 Hours

Below is a link signup for the Saturday, April 13 Annual Mountain View Antenna Party.   It will be held in the Aditorium at 1000 Villa St from 1000 to 1200 hours.   For those helping with Setup and Shutdown, we will start at 0900 and end at 1300 hours.

This is open to Mountain View ARES members as well as Hams from surrounding towns.   The objective of this event is to provide Hams with a chance to both show off their ham gear, to test antennas and radios as well as to simply meet other hams.  There will be test equipment from our members for you to test your equipment to make sure that it is working properly.

So we will know how to set up the room, we need you to sign up by Clicking Thw kink below.   If you have test equipment, or equipment to display, we need you to briefly describe that in the comment area of the form.   If you need help in programming your radio, bring the radio and manual and we will find someone to help you do that.To prepare for that, determine what frequecies that you plan to use.

In the past, in addition to test equipment, we have had examples of go-kits, mobile radio and packet setups.   So if you have something to show, let us know below and bring it.

Click HERE to sign up.


Past

CITY-WIDE CERT/ARES DRILL, November 5, 2022

After Action Report (PDF), by Leslie Grimm, EC

Final White Board DA Summary Display (PDF)

MOUNTAIN VIEW/LOS ALTOS ANTENNA PARTY, APRIL 23, 2022

Hot Wash of the Antenna Party, by Leslie Grimm, EC

 
CITY/COUNTY COMMUNICATIONS DRILL, 19 FEBRUARY 2022, 1000 - 1200 Hours

Mountain View ARES held a drill on Saturday, Feb. 19, 2022, from 10 am to noon. We operated from our homes due to pandemic conditions, simulating message passing during a major rain/wind storm. Radio Operators passed messages as if they were at a CERT neighborhood Command Post.   There was a simulated radio room (MTV EOC) communicating to the county as well as to operators at the simulated CERTs.   This was a credentialed drill, meaning that Operators used standard ICS forms (205, 211, 213, 214, 309) and submitted all their paperwork after the drill.

Click HERE to view the After Action Report.


CITY/COUNTY COMMUNICATIONS DRILL, 15 May 2021, 0945-1200 Hours

The objective of this drill was to test the recently updated Damage Assessment Summary PacFORM from CERT groups and the updated Software to display the results in the EOC at 1000 Villa.

Click HERE to view the After Action Report.


CITY/COUNTY COMMUNICATIONS DRILL, 20 FEBRUARY, 2021, 1000-1200 Hours

For this drill, ARES members passed messages from CERTs to a simulated EOC and also to and from the county EOC.   The scenario was a severe rain and wind storm under pandemic conditions where operators couldn't gather together.   CERTs sent DA Summary forms to an ARES member assigned to them and the ARES member then entered it directly into packet or sent it to a relay Ham who entered it into the packet system.   This was a credentialed drill using several ICS forms (211A, 205, 214, 309, 213, and 213 DA Summary).

Click HERE to view the After Action Report.


OFF THE GRID COMMUNICATION EXERCISE, 2/23/19

In response to the county ARES Communication Exercise, Mountain View did an "off the grid" exercise where everyone, including operators in the Radio Room at K6MTV operated their systems off batteries.   Some participants traveled to CERT sites and recovered hidden messages to transmit.   Other participants used their home packet system operating on battery power to send/receive messages.   Operators at K6MTV also responded to messages from the County.   There were 14 participants (radio room 4, mobile field 4, home packet 6).

Amateur operators sent/received 67 messages by voice.   96 messages were sent by packet of which 46 were delivered before time ran out.   Operators successfully coped with the "loss" of our primary BBS.   Forms were correctly completed by all participants and all but one participant were able to complete all of their assignments. Traffic was non-stop and we had to deal with outside groups interfering with our simplex frequencies but our operators handled it well.   All the participants acted professionally and correctly completed their ICS forms (214, 213, 213 DA, 309, 211).   Everyone was able to operate from their batteries for the entire drill.   We learned what needs improvement for the future.


PACKET CLASS LITE, 02-21-19, WRAPUP

The purpose of this class was to introduce Outpost Packet operation to hams new to packet with a two fold objective: Introduce Packet operation with the hope that they would contine training with the county classes and to provide them with enough skills with Outpost so that they could relieve a trained packet operator for a breif period of time during an exercise or real emergency.

The class had 14 attendees: 1 presenter, 4 instructor/mentors, 9 students.   Five packet stations and antennas were set up in the auditorium at 1000 Villa.   Following a slide presentation on the components of a packet system and Outpost, the class broke into small groups with an instructor/mentor for every 2 or 3 students.   The students practiced setting up outpost and sending and receiving informal and formal messages to various bulletin board systems. By the end of the class all nine students were successfully using packet to send and receive messages.

For pictures of the class, click HERE


MIKE-MIKE DRILL, 08-18-18, WRAPUP

I want to thank Rick Van Mell, KI6PUR, for cordinating the Mike-Mike drill Saturday.   There were a total of 18 people participating inclucing the 5 of us in the "shack".   Rick sent 84 emails inviting Mountain View hams to participate in the drill, so the response was somewhat dissapointing.   However, those who took the time to send us one or more Mike-Mike reports did a great job.   The reports were generally well distributed around Mountain View.

Leslie, KK6EKN, plotted all the places from which we got reports and put a red dot on a map of Mountain View for each one.   We got reports on simplex using HT's for almost all.   Exceptions were Shoreline and Casey (very far north, received on 440 with an HT) and Piper and Elmira (mobile rig, actually in Sunnyvale).   Operators did a good job of covering wide areas of the city.

Click HERE to view the Acrobat copy of the map.

Again, thanks to those of you who helped today!

Phil Henderson, KF6ZSQ, AEC


CREEK SURVEY DRILL
On February 18, 2017, we participated in the county wide drill, and our drill was to do a survey of the Stevens and Permanente Creeks at prescribed survey locations and record the real status of the creeks.   The goals were to report the status of the information via simplex and repeater radios to net control and take pictures up and down stream.   Mountain View CERT members were invited to assist as observers. The photographic results at each survey location can be viewed at this URL:
Creek Survey Pictures

Resources

Frequencies for Programming Radios

Santa Clara Co. Frequencies - These frequencies are organized by City in Santa Clara County and were prepared by Jerry Haag (SK) to match the order of frequencies programmed into the radios in the ARES shack in Mountain view.   The format is Excel, XLS.

Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties frequencies - There are two sheets to this Excel (XLSX) file.   The first has Santa Clara County frequencies from the County website and they are sorted numerically.   The list is separated into Frequently Used, VHF, UHV and Packet.   The Frequently used frequencies are repeated in the subsequent sections.   The second sheet contains Frequently Used, VHF, UHV and Packet frequencies for San Mateo County.   There is no guarantee that I have captured all of the SMC frequencies.   Note that both sheets are laid out so that you can print a frequency sheet. You will have to do some re-formating to match your radio programming program requirements.   Prepared by Phil Henderson.

Training Information from the County

ICS-214-SCCo Unit Activity Log (About 20 min. - MP4 - 87 MB)

ICS-309-SCCo Communications Log - Part 1 (About 20 min. - MP4 - 184 MB)

ICS-309-SCCo Communications Log - Part 2 (About 15 min. - MP4 - 164 MB)

Packet Exercises Workbook PDF

ICS Forms (PDF format)

ICS-205 MTV Communications Plan

ICS-211A MTV RACES Sign-in

ICS-213 MTV Damage Summary, 3-26-14 CERT

ICS-213 SCC Message Form V.06-28-07 Fillable (Acrobat)

ICS-214 MTV Unit Log

ICS-309 MTV Communications Log

ICS-314 MTV Windshield Damage Survey

911 Emergency Message Form

Training Presentations

K6MTV Station Operations (.PDF)

Operating in an Amateur Radio Net (3-26-16)

Principles of Net Control (.PDF)

Principles of Message Passing (.PDF)

Introduction to HF Operations, 6/22/19 - 1.8 MB Acrobat file

Hams and Red Cross (large file) (.PDF)

CERT/Ham Communications (large file)

Disaster Service Workers/RACES Activation - 05/20/17 (.PDF, 4 slides/pg)

DSW Guide to Worker's Compensation (.PDF)

Amateur Packet Radio/CERT in Santa Clara County

Powerpoint Presentation (.PPT)

Adobe Format (.PDF)

SEMS/NIMS Combo Class

On-Line Courses

IS-100.b Introduction to Incident Command System

IS-200.b ICS for Single Resources and Initial Action Incidents

IS-700.a National Incident Management System (NIMS), An Introduction

IS-800.b National Response Framework, An Introduction

SEMS G606 Standardized Emergency Management System Introduction; there is no direct link, so to access it:

Map of the World from Mountain View (.PDF)

Map of Bay Area from Mountain View (.PDF)