Missouri EC's and DEC's,

Here are a few suggestions for some help in some ideas to get your county ARES moving forward.

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The EC position, in a nutshell, is that you develop/maintain good relationships with the Hams and with the Served Agencies, and provide organization and training to the Hams of your area to help them be most effective to the Served Agencies. It's really that simple.

How would you like to start? Here are some ideas.

1. I would be happy to introduce you to Red Cross, Emergency Management or anyone else where you feel that would be helpful. A letter from a state-level position can sometimes make all the difference in the world.
   
   
2. Hold an organizational meeting with a little food and a speaker. The speaker might be a representative of a Served Agency even your District EC. Be sure to invite any Hams that you can contact. An ARES team depends upon club members because they are usually the most active, but it is not limited to only club members. Any Ham in the county that you feel you can work with is invited to join.
   
   
3. Order some ARES ID cards from ARRL HQ and use them. These are available at no charge. I recommend printing an expiration date on them of 1 or 2 years.
   
   
4. Appoint someone as Assistant EC (it's a local appointment entirely in your hands) to be in charge of your packet communications. It's up to them to establish and maintain a traditional packet node to get in touch with Jefferson City. I can give you or them help in getting this going.
   
   
5. Setup APRS to use with SKYWARN or with the public service 'thons in your area.
   
   
6. Hold a regular net to discuss ARES activities and procedures. If you have a club net, you might dedicate a portion of it to ARES activities.
   
   
7. Appoint an ARES team member to be your HF Liaison to the Missouri Traffic Net (MOTRAN). That net meets daily at 5:45pm on approximately 3.963 MHz. You should also encourage everyone to check into the Missouri Emergency Services Net (MESN) on Sundays at 6:30pm or immediately following MOTRAN if it runs late, on 3.963 MHz or 7.263 MHz as propagation warrants.
   
   
8. Find a job for everyone. I've mentioned a few responsibilities in this message. Make someone else responsible for part of what needs to be done and have them report to you as EC. When it comes to volunteers, it's Use 'em or Lose 'em!
   
   
9. There are at least 4 certificates of appreciation or of merit that you can use to show that your team members are appreciated for their efforts. Volunteers get paid in recognition!
   
   
10. You can recommend stations to me for appointment as Official Emergency Stations. See http://www.arrl.org/field/org/oes.html for job description.
    
    
11. Discuss how your ARES team will be called out when needed. What if the phone lines are down? Which simplex or repeater frequencies will be used to contact everyone. Establish a phonetree to use if the phones are working.
    
    
12. Keep up the communication between yourself and your ARES team members. If most of them have email, I recommend that you email them a copy of the monthly report that you mail to your District EC. That format is available here if you need it.
    
    
13. Send invitations to the Hams that are shown in Buckmaster for your county: http://199.111.6.2/cgi- bin/do_hamcall. You can get the ARES trifolds from ARRL HQ for no charge to include in your mailing.
    
    
14. Work with one or more Served Agencies to setup a drill for your area. I'm sure that the Warning Coordination Meteorologist at the NWS for your area (Pleasant Hill, St. Louis, Springfield, Paducah, Memphis), would be happy to announce a TEST Tornado Warning for your county seat. The Director of Disaster Services for the lead chapter of American Red Cross in your area would be happy to give you a call asking you to activate ARES to provide communications between a mock shelter and the EOC. Your local county Emergency Management Director may have an upcoming drill that your ARES team may participate in.
    
    
15. The Public Service column in QST each month on about page 85 holds some good ideas, as do the books that came with yoru initial EC package from HQ. I also get some good ideas from the ARRL Letter which you can find on http://www.arrl.org/arrlletter/ all the way back to 1996. There's a link on that page to have it emailed to you!
    
    
16. Organize a training session on passing traffic. A good practice session for tactical traffic would be handling communications for a local parade or volunteering your group for one of the -thons held in Missouri.
    
    
17. Here's an event you could use this to practice handling formal Health and Welfare traffic. This fall is when the SET (Simulated Emergency Test) is conducted. It is like Field Day, but just for ARES. The Section SET will be pretty basic, but you can make the local part of it as complete as you would like. A recent QST has the national guidelines or another resource, on the web, is:
    

Section I: The Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES)

Chapter Two: Simulated Emergency Test (SET)

found at http://www.arrl.org/field/pscm/sec1-ch2.html.

I hope you find the above ideas of help. To continue this discussion, Please contact your District EC or myself if the DEC position is presently vacant. If you are a DEC, of course, call me or email me directly. The point is to make sure that you get the help that you need to make ARES a real contribution to your communities.

73,

Don Moore, km0r
Missouri SEC