1 Emergency Response Network of the Inland Empire Communications
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Emergency Response Network of the Inland Empire Communications Plan February 2010 Background and Objective: Establish an Amateur Radio Communications Plan for the member agencies of ERNIE to be implemented in the event of a disaster, where current business band radio and telephone (cell and landline) are rendered useless and there is absolutely no other means of communications. Method: a. Teach and license as many water district employees as possible in the use of Amateur Radio. b. Teach and continually practice with these employees how to use the radio, how to talk on the radio, how to send and receive messages; in short, feel at ease using Amateur Radio. c. Inventory and keep current, the type of radios installed, the number of handheld radios in any caches or assigned to employees and those employees who are licensed Amateur Radio operators. Implementation: a. Establish a Communications Plan using specific frequencies via a repeater and via simplex. Knowing that in a disaster when all other modes of communications have failed, duplex operation (through a repeater) may not be the best option. A comprehensive simplex plan must be established and exercised regularly to insure all participants can either (1) talk to each other and/or (2) have established relay stations for outlying members. For definition of using a repeater and simplex, please see Appendix D. b. Inventory all Amateur Radio equipment and licensed operators at each location. Please see Appendix A c. This Plan will be exercised monthly incorporating two drills and Exercise Protocol, found in Appendix B. This exercise serves two purposes, exercise the operators and insure that the radios and equipment are working properly. d. Work with member agencies in the purchase and installation of radios and antennas. e. Program all radios with the same frequencies and in the same sequential order. f. Because the Federal Communications Commission has recently issued an interpretative statement regarding the prohibition of paid employees (pecuniary interest) participating in drills or exercises utilizing amateur radio, we must train and practice without the mention of the member agency’s name and simply identify by call letters and first name. Please see Appendix H for that statement. 1 g. For FCC regulations for authorized and prohibited transmissions, please see Appendices F and G, respectively. h. The FCC did establish a procedure for governmental agencies to apply for a waiver to conduct exercises and/or drills via Amateur Radio. If desired, a waiver could be applied for. i. Synopsis from February 2010 CQ Magazine regarding this interpretation is reprinted in Appendix E. j. Amateur Radio licensed agency employees will regularly use their handheld radios to become more at ease using a repeater by simply getting on the air and talking to other amateur stations. k. Exercises will be monthly and twofold. Stations will contact other stations for signal strength then pass messages, speaking in Clear Text (without the use of codes or signals) and using the uniform Phonetic Alphabet to alleviate any misunderstandings. Please see Appendix B for the Exercise Protocol and Appendix C for the Phonetic Alphabet. l. Because we have an arrangement with Keller Peak Repeater Association and because of the recent FCC Pecuniary Interest interpretation, I respectfully suggest that individual memberships be established (under the employee’s name) to support our usage of the repeater, as we do not want to draw attention to our agencies and our purpose for using the repeater. The Plan a. In the event, and only in the event that the (collective) water district’s radios fail and in the event that landline and cell phones are inoperable, amateur radio will be used. b. When Amateur Radio is utilized, the primary frequency will be the Keller Peak repeater, 146.385 (transmit up: 146.985), with a tone of 146.2. Arrangements have been made with the Keller Peak Repeater Association to utilize the repeater. The Salvation Army, SATERN, the Salvation Army Team Emergency Radio Network, also has an agreement to use the repeater. (SATERN consists of volunteers who do not fall under the recent FCC interpretation). c. Secondly, a simplex frequency will be used, 144.330, to talk from water district to water district, however (1) monitoring tests need to be performed to insure this simplex frequency is not being regularly used by anyone else in the area and (2) signal strength testing needs to be performed to determine the distance and strength of the simplex signal from each fixed location. It is highly unlikely that agency to agency communications can be achieved via handheld radios operating simplex, therefore more powerful base radios need to be installed and used. (Again, for definition, please see Appendix D). d. An Exercise will be implemented monthly on a controlled basis where there is a rotating “Net Control” and the other agencies check into a net (a controlled “roundtable.”). This will be performed on the simplex frequency and there will be one station from each agency. If the agency’s signal does not reach completely to 2 another agency, there will be designated relay stations. Exercise protocol will be found in Appendix B. The monthly Exercise will be carried out in two parts. 1) The first will be a readability/signal strength test performed on simplex. Using the database matrix with the simplex mapping, it would be predetermined what station can talk directly to another station without the use of an intermediary station to relay the information. Use of some relay stations is inevitable. This exercise is performed for two reasons, (a) insure the equipment is operating properly, and (b) to insure the operators keep competent. Please see Appendix I. 2) The second part of the monthly Exercise will be the passing of messages using the Phonetic Alphabet to maximize message understanding. In each Exercise, the message portion will change; messages such as the street on which you live, town where you were born, town in which you work, street on which you work, etc. An example will be found in Appendix B. List of Appendices A Amateur Radio Inventory B Exercise Protocol C Phonetic Alphabet D Repeater and Simplex Operation E Article from CQ Magazine, February 2010 F C.F.R. Title 47, Section 97.111, Authorized Transmissions (FCC) G C.F.R. Title 47, Section 97.113, Prohibited Transmissions (FCC) H FCC Interpretation: Amateur Service Communications During Government Disaster Drills (October 20, 2009) I Simplex Signal Strength Chart and Mapping J List of Member Agencies Revised 2/08/02010 3 Appendix A Amateur Radio Inventory Agency Name: _____________________________________________________ Contact: _____________________________________________________ Address: _____________________________________________________ City: _____________________________________________________ Phone: ______________________________________________________ Make and model of fixed/base radios: __________________________________ Number of fixed/base radios: __________________________________________ Location of fixed radios: ________________________________________________ Make and model of handheld radios: ___________________________________ Number of handheld radios: ____________________________________________ Name and callsign of employee Amateur Radio operator: _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ 4 Appendix B Exercise Protocol (1) Net Dialogue Net Control: This is KI6HYS calling W7BIA. W7BIA (1st responder): This is W7BIA, you are Circuit Merit 1 “4”. Net Control: Thank you, Arnie. You are a Circuit Merit 5 here. This is KI6YHS calling W6CK, come in please. W6CK (2nd responder): This is W6CK, you are Circuit Merit 5. Net Control: Thank you, Bill. You are Circuit Merit 4 here. This is KI6HYS calling K6RSF. K6RSF (3rd responder): This is K6RSF, you are Circuit Merit 5 Net Control: Thank you, Bret. You are Circuit Merit 5 also. This is KI6HYS calling (next station…..) (2) Message Handling Messages will be passed from one station to the next station containing various information such as someone’s street name or city in which they were born, etc. To eliminate the chance of error and misinterpretation, these messages or phrases will be sent using the Phonetic Alphabet. For example, if an operator lives on Wood Glenn Court, the message would say: “Wood Glen Court, I say Whiskey, Oscar, Oscar, Delta, Golf, Lima, Echo, November, Charlie, Oscar, Uniform, Romeo, Tango. Copy?” And if the receiving station copied everything correctly, they would reply: “(their callsign) copies.” 1 Circuit Merit System based on signal readability from “0” (unreadable) to “5” (loud and clear readability). 5 Appendix C Phonetic Alphabet A Alpha N November B Brave O Oscar C Charlie P Papa D Delta Q Quebec E Echo R Romeo F Foxtrot S Sierra G Golf T Tango H Hotel U Uniform I India V Victor J Juliet W Whiskey K Kilo X X-Ray L Lima Y Yankee M Mike Z Zulu 6 Appendix