Rolla Regional Amateur Radio Society
Emergency Preparedness
Suggestions to Consider During Emergencies
- In any emergency, your first priority should be the safety of your family and yourself and your property.
- Monitor local commercial radio stations for information.
- If the W0GS repeater (146.790 MHz, PL 88.5 Hz) is operational, monitor it for activity.
Remember that if you are in or near the City of Rolla, you can use the alternate repeater
(147.210 MHz, PL 88.5 Hz) which is linked to the 146.790 MHz repeater.
- If you have an important message or need to communicate, make a brief call on the repeater to ask for assistance,
identifying the level of importance of your message or need (classes would be "EMERGENCY" "PRIORITY" "INFORMATION").
- If the W0GS repeater is off the air, set your radio for SIMPLEX operation on 146.790 MHz and make any
necessary calls. Make sure you tone squelch is turned off, and reduce your audio squelch to minimum so you can copy weak signals.
- If the W0GS repeater is working, and you have lengthy information to pass or receive, please coordinate
another frequency with the other station (suggest 146.500 MHz simplex, if you can reach each other directly).
- You might also check other regional repeaters for information, for instance 146.895 MHz at Brinktown, MO,
145.450 MHz (W0EEE repeater at the University campus), 146.700 MHz (PL 88.5 Hz) in Lebanon, etc.
- The most important thing is that if you have no significant messages to send or receive, please do not
transmit, but monitor in case you might hear of a situation in which you can help. If there is a net control
station and he asks who is monitoring, please let him know that you are there. Otherwise, just listen.
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SKYWARN...
Each Tuesday evening, 7:00 PM, or as warranted by actual severe weather,
the Rolla repeaters are linked to the
Springfield, MO SKYWARN repeater, 145.490 MHz (-600 kHz offset, PL tone of 136.5 Hz). The Tuesday evening link is for the purpose
of participating in the Southwest Missouri SKYWARN Training Net. Please see details at the
RRARS Meetings/Nets page.
The alternate repeater in Southwest Missouri for SKYWARN is 147.120 MHz (+600 kHz offset,
PL tone of 107.2 Hz).
Posted here is a SKYWARN spotter guideline quick-reference handout (Acrobat .pdf file).
Feel free to print this for your reference.
ARES®...
The Amateur Radio Emergency Service® Emergency Coordinator (EC) for Phelps County is Joe Counsil, KØOG.
If you wish to participate with the Phelps County ARES® group, please contact Joe, at
k0og@arrl.net, and you will
be given a registration form to complete. You may print and fill out
this form and give it to Joe.
If you are not in Phelps County, please contact your county EC, found at the
Missouri ARES® web page.
If you are going to be involved in ARES®, you should take the free "Introduction to the Incident Command System"
ICS-100 course
offered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The ICS-100 course is a self-paced on-line course.
The ARRL also offers (for a $50 fee for ARRL members) the
EC-001 "Introduction to Emergency Communication"
course, and this is a mentored course, so you will have interaction with an instructor.
The EC-001 course is focused on the part amateur radio operators can play in local emergency services.
Please consider purchasing from the ARRL,
or printing a free .pdf copy of the
ARES Field Resources Manual.
All ARES® members should read the
Public Service Communications Manual at the ARRL web site
(here is a .pdf of a slightly older version).
Links of Interest...
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