SKYWARN Recognition Day

[KC9ECI]

SKYWARN Recognition Day is sponsored by the National Weather Service (NWS) and the American Radio Relay League (ARRL). It honors the contributions that Volunteer SKYWARN radio operators make to the National Weather Service and pays tribute to them for their vital public service they provide.

The SKYWARN Recognition Day event will be held December 4, 2004 from 0000 - 2400 UTC (6:00 pm Friday to 6:00 pm Saturday). The La Crosse National Weather Service (NWS) office is planning to operate from 0000 UTC (6:00 pm Friday local time) to 0700 UTC (midnight Friday) and from 1200 UTC (6:00 am Saturday) until everyone has had their fun and wants to pack up and go home. In the past this has been around 2100 UTC (3:00 pm Saturday) before it gets to dark.

This year the high frequency radios and antennas will be setup by the Mississippi Valley Amateur Radio Association and Riverland Amateur Radio Club. Both groups will assist you with any radios, bands or modes you wish to use to make contacts.

Tours of the La Crosse NWS will be given by the NWS staff.

The SKYWARN event is a friendly contest held between each participating NWS office. The object is for all amateur stations to exchange QSO information with as many NWS stations as possible. The exchange information is: Call sign, signal report, QTH, and a one or two word description of the weather at your location. Last year the La Crosse NWS made 283 contacts 37 with NWS stations. Our goal for this year is 400.

[WA5KRP]

We're very fortunate here in south central Texas to have a strong working relationship with the NWS office that serves San Antonio and Austin. A bunch of us have signed up to participate again this year. Our call will be KD5UMW. I expect to be on 20M or 40M. Other folks will be doing the IRLP thingy.

I look forward to operating and hope to hear a bunch of you guys out there as well.


WA5KRP
Texas

SHOW ME YOUR THUNDERBOLT!

[N5PVL]

We should be proud of what we do with SKYWARN but we should also remember that the FCC has just finished characterizing Hams as "hobbyists" whose activities do not merit protection from BPL interference. Our emergency communications efforts were specifically dissed, as other outfits involved in e-comms were given protection from that same BPL interference.

I was active is SKYWARN when I lived in North Texas, where the weather is interesting. Although my main interest is digital communications, I picked up a micropohone regularly back then as my QTH on Lake Texoma was perfectly placed for reporting on weather events headed toward the Sherman/Denison area. - I generaly caught whatever it was about 20-30 minutes before it would hit one of those cities, and there were no other hams in the immediate vicinity. Because of my location and willingness to participate, I got to be one of the "regulars" in the SKYWARN net there.

I happened to be listening to an AM radio station that reported the Oklahoma City bombing as it happened, picked up the mike and had the North Texas/Southern Oklahoma ARES folks activated within five minutes of the event.

Later on somebody wanted to know how I knew about the explosion before anybody else, like he thought there was something fishy about it... I showed him my portable AM radio, and flipped him "the bird". We got a laugh out of that.

When I moved here to South Texas ( 650 miles south of the old QTH, but still in Texas ) I discovered that weather events (hurricanes) generally only occur every ten years or so. The rest of the time - there is no weather.

Here in the southern tip of Texas, there are nine months of Summer, interrupted by three months of Fall/Spring. There is no winter in South Texas, hardly ever any thunderstorms, and no tornadoes except every ten years or so, when a hurricane might blow through. It is common to run the air-conditioning here on Christmas Day.

As a result of this lack of weather, I found that SKYWARN was nonexistant in South Texas. Also, the ham population here are mainly retirees from northern states who come here to get away from the weather. There are almost no amateurs in this area who are younger than 60... A good percentage are octagenarians.

Skywarn was a moot point in South Texas, in fact, until the DHS decided to start handing out grant money. Soon after that, sorry scumbags from around the Valley rushed to have themselves appointed to the neglected ARES posts here.

So we have a guy who stole $2,000.00 from a local ham club's treasury in charge of one of the counties down here, and another scammer who has an outbuilding full of stolen club equipment in another ARES position, and other undesirable scum holding down the rest. The Valley ham community's pariah dogs had found themselves a home at last.

As far as I can tell, there is still no legitimate ARES or SKYWARN activity here - but we do have a group dedicated to scamming up some of that grant money. All of the ham radio trash to be found in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

The contrast between this group and the dedicated, decent hams I had the honor of working with in North Texas is breathtaking.

The NWS folks down here only see these scumbags, and so have developed a low opinion of Amateur Radio operators. At a big Valley-wide conference on hurricane preparedness, the local city and county officials were so impressed with our ARES group that they decided to buy a bunch of cellphones for their emergency communications, leaving ham radio operators out of their plans altogether.

What would the group here suggest, for straightening out the situation with Skywarn/ARES in South Texas?

Charles, #N5PVL

[N5PVL]

WA5KRP Says:
Quote[/b] ]
We're very fortunate here in south central Texas to have a strong working relationship with the NWS office that serves San Antonio and Austin. #A bunch of us have signed up to participate again this year. #Our call will be KD5UMW. #I expect to be on 20M or 40M. #Other folks will be doing the IRLP thingy.


WA5KRP is being modest... The Austin/San Antonio SKYWARN/ARES folks are the most impressive ham radio e-comms group I have ever seen - or heard of. #An outstanding bunch of hams, and it has been that way for over twenty years that I can personally attest to.

Charles, #N5PVL

[k9es]

The National Weather Service - Melbourne FL, will be operating Skywarn Recognition Day using WX4MLB. We intend to operate 80 - 10M and VHF using 3 HF stations and a VHF station. We will be operating for the entire 24 hour period, with monoband beams on 40M thru 10M, and a very high dipole on 80M. Our 3 transmitters will be using 500 Watts output. We will spend 50% CW and 50% SSB. On VHF, we will have 6M SSB and 2M FM and SSB. Please give us a call when you hear us on.

Both amateurs from Osceola County and Brevard County FL will participate.

Melbourne FL NWS was the prime NWS during Hurricanes Charlie, Frances, and Jeanne. Most of the radar pictures you saw were generated from our NWS. If you are in Melbourne FL during the event, stop by.
73's
Eric K9ES

[kc0arf]

Hello,

The WFO GRB will be on IRLP Reflector 9210 on Friday, from 6pm to 10pm, and again on Saturday from noon until 4pm, all CST. We do not QSL card, but will enjoy chatting with anyone on the reflector who would like to say hello.

Enjoy SRD.

Christian KC0ARF

[N9CJT]

Quote[/b] (N5PVL @ Nov. 28 2004,04:14)]The NWS folks down here only see these scumbags, and so have developed a low opinion of Amateur Radio operators. At a big Valley-wide conference on hurricane preparedness, the local city and county officials were so impressed with our ARES group that they decided to buy a bunch of cellphones for their emergency communications, leaving ham radio operators out of their plans altogether. What would the group here suggest, for straightening out the situation with Skywarn/ARES in South Texas?
Charles:

I found a similar circumstance in St. Louis, MO when I moved there in 1991. I was advised then that things might improve between NWS and hams in that area when both the hams who caused the original problem and the NWS folks who threw them out had all died of old age. I wonder if that's happened yet.

--Noel

[kc2jcb]

NWS Upton NY (NYC-Long Island office) will also be on the air 80-10 meters. We will also be on IRLP node 9219 as NCS from 0300-0330 and 1330-1400 UTC. We will also be on the K2SPD and N1LFE repeaters at times, both of which are Echolink connected. Hope to talk to you during the event.

For more info on our operations including QSL card info, see WX2OKX SRD Operations (http://www.erh.noaa.gov/okx/Skywarn/srd2004.html).

73 de Scott KC2JCB
NWS Upton NY SKYWARN Program Leader

[KB1LQC]

Im a bit confused on what frequency the SKywarn stations will be on. Will there be any on any technitian bands? I would Love to participate! preferably on 80 and 40 meter tech bands would be great! I only found that some will be on 80 and 40 M but never specified beyond that.



Thanks,
KB1LQC

[KI4GKW]

If anyone can give me the frequencies that they are using so I can listen in on the reciever, since i'm only a tech. http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/blues.gif It is greatly appreciated.

Paul,
KI4GKW

[kd5ful]

I was once involved heavily in Bell, Coryell, Lampasas, and northern Burnet counties in CenTex.
It is my experience, gents, that if a truly dedicated group of individuals simply do the job, ask for nothing from the "Bigwigs", organize independent of the scum, and kill same scum with kindness, the NWS folks will see the real deal and the little group of hardcore dedicated individuals will win out over the old scumbags.
That's kinda how I remember it from back in Copperas Cove.
73.
James

[KD7ZOS]

Hey Charles: great post, has anybody tried to find out from the fuzz if they can find any criminal charges on these clowns? Also if they are misusing any federal grant money...Burn their butts:angry: they are an insult to the ham community, and the dedicated SkyWarn folks. Last resort, have someone sue them in small claims court! Happy Holidays to y'all down in the great satat of Texas!;-) Tom KD7ZOS

[KC9ECI]

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/arx/ham2004.php

Quote[/b] ]Equipment was setup at the La Crosse NWS office by the Riverland Amateur Radio Club and the Mississippi Valley Amateur Radio Association with operators working radios throughout the event. Everyone involved had a great time.

We made a total of 453 contacts in 44 states, including 50 other National Weather Service offices. We also made contacts in several Canadian Providences. In previous years, our office has never topped 300 contacts so we far exceeded our goal.

We operated on 2m, 10m, 15m, 20m, 40m, 80m, APRS, and CW, logging the most contacts on 20m (215). The busiest contact times were Friday evening (7 p.m. - 9 p.m.), Saturday morning (8 a.m. - 11 a.m.), and Saturday afternoon, (1 p.m. - 4 p.m.). Here are some of the results...

Total # of contacts made: 453
Total # of NWS offices contacted: 50
Total # of states worked: 44
Total # of International Contacts made: 7
State with most contacts: Pennsylvania (35)
Most contacts made on 20m (215)
Busiest hour of contacts: 21:00-22:00 UTC (72)
Several groups and amateur radio operators visited our office during the event, including a group from Grant County, WI, Viroqua, WI, and WXOW Television (Channel 19 - La Crosse, WI). Tours were given of our operations area.

A special thanks goes out to the Riverland Amateur Radio Club and the Mississippi River Amateur Radio Association for their participation and use of equipment. As always, we appreciate the time and effort you put in to assist our office.

Radio operators or loggers included: Terry Miller - KB9YXV
Tom Speropulos - N9IGS

Tom O'Brien - WB9BJQ
Craig Goldbeck - N9ETD

Greg Hovland - KC0IKU
Todd Shea - KB9YXS

Ken Cook - KB9YXT
James Ackerman - KC9CSS

Roger Reader - KA9BKK
Bradley Ackerman - KC9EJP

Mary-Beth Schreck
Mark Smick - N9UNW

Tom Peterson - KC9ECI
Donna Miller