Lothian 4x4 Response - Foundation Radio License Course.

[ColinR]

Lothian 4x4 Response ran their first Foundation License Radio Course today and I am pleased to say all 7 attendees passed.

Were running another one on the 25Th July if anybody is interested, full details from hugh.steele@lothian4x4response.org

Heres some of the happy attendees and some of the training team. Thanks to Hugh(behind the camera) for organising things.

http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/9133/205f.th.jpg (http://img696.imageshack.us/i/205f.jpg/)
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[Patrick Molloy]

Congratulations to all. With there being no requirement for licences re CB radios, I'd be interested to know why your group went this route. disregard if this has been covered before - i do recall a long thread on this elsewhere....just don't have time to dig around for it.

[ColinR]

A lot of the members were amateurs already and members of Raynet, we felt that amateur was a more professional network to use. Also Cotag have gone the amateur route as well and with recent discusions with the Police it was indicated that this was a better option.

[BobWessex]

This has been pretty much thrashed to death, but from the point of view of resilience and range in remote areas the amateur band seems best suited to the needs of most groups. Others I know have gone for other options, after due consideration of what might be best for their method of operation.

The main thing to remember with amateur radio is that ALL you need is the tranceiver and a decent battery connected to a decent aerial.

CONGRATULATIONS to all those who passed the exam

[Patrick Molloy]

thanks all for the explanation

[Andy Cunningham]

This has been pretty much thrashed to death, but from the point of view of resilience and range in remote areas the amateur band seems best suited to the needs of most groups. Others I know have gone for other options, after due consideration of what might be best for their method of operation.

The main thing to remember with amateur radio is that ALL you need is the tranceiver and a decent battery connected to a decent aerial.

CONGRATULATIONS to all those who passed the exam

What Bob said. Congrats from me as well (73 de M0HAK!)

Everything else is either short range or has external dependencies. I would encourage anyone interested in emergency response (as opposed to purely the 4x4 aspect) to consider giving up a weekend to get a foundation amateur radio licence.

A case in point is the flooding of the phone exchange in Paddington recently. Over 150 connected exchanges with reduced capactiy, and mobile, broadband, and internet hosting centres all offline. And we want to help with the flooding? Only if we can get in touch with an EPO who might be down to whoever RAYNET can reach on his/her behalf.

It nothing else, I'd like to suggest that we maintain a register of "hams" who are part of 4x4 response and establish a couple of means of establishing contact if there ever is major comms failure.

[BobWessex]

Hi Andy,

I did suggest a while back (a year or so ago) that we ought to look at a frequency on 10 megs as well as 2 megs that we could maintain a listening watch on.

Within Wessex we tend to use 145.400 for general comms alongside ch22 CB and of course with enough tri band/quad band radios we can set up a net local & national quite easily. The main thing is whatever is decided upon needs to be as simple as possible.

Ideally to paraphrase an Emergency Planning injunction "get in (to the car), tune in, listen in"

[Andy Cunningham]

Hi Andy,

I did suggest a while back (a year or so ago) that we ought to look at a frequency on 10 megs as well as 2 megs that we could maintain a listening watch on.

Within Wessex we tend to use 145.400 for general comms alongside ch22 CB and of course with enough tri band/quad band radios we can set up a net local & national quite easily. The main thing is whatever is decided upon needs to be as simple as possible.

Ideally to paraphrase an Emergency Planning injunction "get in (to the car), tune in, listen in"

We tend to use Ch13 on CB. There is some interest from some of our committee in getting licences for amateur radio as well which will help expand the network. It might also be worth doing some co-ordinated tests at some point to figure out what's possible with the hardware we have.

My first thought is that we (Hants and Berks) should use 144.400 as well given the limited number of users - and range - we have.

I would suggest we consider a 10m frequency and perhaps an 80m frequency as well for national co-ordination.

While they are an external dependency, I'd also consider thinking about which repeaters provide useful inter- and intra-group coverage. I know I can get into GB3SN and GB3WH from home, both of which should have coverage to you, and GB3FN and GB3WS will give me coverage into the South East group area as well.

I know some RAYNET groups suggest listening at 15 minutes to and past each hour (so, say 07:45, 08:15, 08:45...) since most "official" news broadcasts are on the hour. MIght be worth establishing something similar for our purposes as well.

[BobWessex]

Hi Andy,

Within our Policies and procedures we have the following for catastrophic failure of the local and/or national phone service which is also likely to result in partial or total loss of the internet. You might like to consider adopting/modifying for your group All team members < we have 12 teams A-L each with a team manager (Bronze controller)> should proceed to the agreed RV point <for that team> and at least one vehicle should monitor channel 22 of the CB and 145.400 on the amateur band. If continuous monitoring of both channels is not possible, perhaps because of extreme cold preventing the vehicle being manned then for as long as possible the channels should be monitored from five minutes before until 5 minute after each hour & half hour i.e. from 10.55 -11.05 & 11.25-11.35

The Duty Controller or a designated deputy will put out a call on the hour and half hour from the Support unit i.e. “2E0WRA calling any Wessex 4x4 Response mobile,” on the Amateur band and “Whisky Echo Zero One calling any Response Mobile” The controller will repeat the call and listen for one minute before repeating the call and then listening for a further 2 minutes, any unit receiving the call should acknowledge the call and advise any other units with whom he has contact, who may not be in touch with the support unit. At this time as full a report of the situation should be passed both ways to ensure that as much information is recorded regarding requirements and actual or potential deployments.