RACES

Tech Talk: Personal Emergency Communications

Saturday, April 30th will be a Tech Talk day for HurstARC. Denise Lucas, N5WTK, will be talking about the need for a plan of communications in an emergency. All are invited to attend.
This will also be the beginning lesson of the RACES CE program that Mike, N5YM, Butch, KC5ONZ, Chris, KD5HIY, and the Hurst City Emergency Manager have put together to better serve the City of Hurst when needed.
You can find Denise’s presentation here: Personal Emergency Communications Plan

DFW Area Amateur Radio information

There are few groups worth investigating if you want to stay abreast of the latest happenings in amateur radio in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
A relatively new Yahoo group, DFW-RO, has been started by Anthony Burokas (KB3DVS) with the purpose of bringing together radio operators and clubs from all around the Dallas/Fort Worth area into one place. This would be particularly useful whenever there are events that affect the entire region.
The ARRL North Texas section (NTX) has an Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) Yahoo group, NTX ARES, for sharing information about events and ideas related to ARES in North Texas.
The DFW Area Ham Radio Interoperability Group promotes the sharing of resources and technology for the achievement of amateur radio EmComm interoperability in North Central Texas. They publish a standard channel list of repeaters used for emergency communications in the four counties that make up the DFW area and the bordering counties.
Hurst ARC has adopted the standard list and fill in the first 20 channels that are available for local use. It’s recommended that all members program their radios as close to this standard as possible (within the limits of individual radio features). The radios in the EOC are programmed to this standard.
The file you need is here: HARC_EOC_050512
To use these files, it’s recommended to use the free CHIRP radio programming software. The file is CSV (comma-separated values) so you can import it into CHIRP, manually program your radio, or import into another radio programming software.