tulsa special event

[kc0hex]

Thanks to all the hams who contacted W5IAS, the Tulsa Amateur Radio Club special event station this past weekend. Thanks to you our exercise was a lot of fun and very helpful to our community.

Thanks Again. http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[KD5KUF]

I was mobile on US 60 on my way back from the Joplin Ham Fest and checked in from Fairland using the 444.875 Ketchum machine. I did not know what the "special event" was all about at the time, but after listening for a while I caught on to the purpose and rechecked to let Lurene know that I was a member of the Delaware County Emergency Management team.
This led to a spate of rechecks from other previous check ins that wanted to acknowlege their own teams and EOCs.

I was gratified to hear the announcement of the total number of checkins, but it could have been much higher with a little more coordination of area hams. I am not criticizing TARC operations (always excellent) but many like me in the outlying areas don't always monitor the TARC repeaters and I probably need to change that as I can access five different repeaters on the link plus 145.110, but only tend to monitor when severe weather approaches. The rest of the time I listen to my local repeaters and simplex frequencies and consequently never heard any previous announcements. And since my EM team mostly uses commercial VHF radios, (very few hams) I don't think many of them were even aware of the excersize at all. http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif

But that is what is needed. To catch everyone flat footed and see how well we can respond to the situation. Maybe we will be more on our toes when it really counts. http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif