EMC088 Uses for Amateur Radio 1/7 
To:   Emergency Communications Units - Information Bulletin
To:   Emergency Management Agencies via Internet and Radio
By:   Auxiliary Communications Service (ACS) of the
      California Governor's Office of Emergency Services  

EMC088 Uses for Amateur Radio 1/7    For release 7/14/97

This material was presented to a semi-annual meeting of the
communications leaders from ACS, ARES, CDF VIP, MARS, RACES,
REACT, Red Cross, and other emergency response officials. They
represented a population of 2,522,368 and an area of 13,860
sqare miles, being 11 counties, each of which may exceed the
size and population of one or more states. 

The author is Bill Pennington, California State OES Inland
Region Chief ACS Officer; ARES DEC; El Dorado County ARC; CDF
VIP Operator, USAF MARS EC California, all volunteer positions.
Bill is employed as a Warning Notification Controller for
State OES. 

As the Inland Region Chief ACS Officer, the area of Bill's 
volunteer work includes 35 counties totalling 72,080 Sq.
miles with a population of 5,088,944 (last census). While
in the private sector he installed many of the systems he
writes about in this article.

             AMATEUR RADIO?  WHERE?  WHY?  HOW?
 
Query: "Where, why and how can we use our radios more?"  

Reply: Look at the communications systems your jurisdiction or
agency uses and find weaknesses in them.  Then, find a way to
eliminate or minimize the effects of those weaknesses, using
the Amateur radio operators and their equipment."
 
 [Caution: these weaknesses usually only appear during an
emergency or incident. Unless specifically designed to identify
communications weaknesses, an exercise will most likely miss
it.] 

                  Background factors to consider:

 - Most Public SAFETY agencies have several communication means
that they rely on during both local and regional emergencies in
their Emergency Operations Centers (EOC's). Public SERVICE
agencies, such as the Red Cross, will have only one or two in
comparison.

 - Telephones for both voice and data (fax) are most prevalent.
Usually there are several lines on the basic telephone system as
well as direct lines for voice only between permanent county EOCs
within a state or region. 

   There are the phones which rely on microwave radio systems
either through standard vault and tower systems (voice and data)
or satellite systems (voice only as doppler shift almost
eliminates data).
 
 - Phone systems have the usual problems we have experienced or
heard about: 

a. Massive overloading by people making welfare calls in the
area of the incident is a major problem.

 b. Phone lines seem to catch the worst in the immediate area of
a large scale incident.

 c. Both wire or fiber optic lines break, burn or get shorted by
fire, flood or earthquake.
  
 d. Microwave system antennas seem to get knocked out of
alignment by quakes and very dense smoke can cause distortion or
attenuate the signal as to make the system unusable. Intense
rainfall will cause "rain fade" and there goes the microwave
signal again. Since the satellite systems use microwave they are
susceptible to the same problems as standard microwave systems. 

Continues next week
                                 ---
ACS Web page: http://acs.oes.ca.gov       FTP archive:
ftp.ucsd.edu/hamradio/packet/tcpip/incoming for new
bulletins and ftp.ucsd.edu/hamradio/races for earlier ones
ACS Landline BBS 916-262-0856 (graphical or standard interface)
OES ACS staff manager Stan Harter:  Stanly_Harter@oes.ca.gov 
State Chief ACS Officer Cary Mangum:  Cary_Mangum@oes.ca.gov
EOM EMC088