The Annual Douglas County Visual Siren Test will be held on Saturday March 9th.  This exercise is to provide a radio operator at each siren location to observe it during activation.  This will confirm that it is rotating as expected, that the siren is sounding properly and that it is in good repair.    With more than 100 sirens in Douglas County all available hams are needed.      This year there will be only be two soundings.  The first one at 11:00 am, and the second at 11:30 am.     If everything goes off as scheduled the net should be secured by 12:00 noon.     This is a great event for your first volunteer experience or just getting back into the community service arena!

Sign up now to help with the 2019 Douglas County Siren Test at the link below.

https://tinyurl.com/2019SirenTest

It’s happened or will happen to every amateur radio operator who’s been involved in public service or emergency communications for a while: you get to the drill or event site and your radio isn’t programmed correctly.  You find out the repeater you’ll be using has a CTCSS tone to access it now, or you have the wrong offset, or you don’t even have that frequency in your radio.   NOW WHAT???

With new feature rich radios many of us do not know how to program a radio without a laptop and programming cable, but in the field you may not always have access to those things.    To help use be better able to communicate in those situations,  SATERN will be hosting a “Hand Held Front Panel Programming” class.    – You do not have to be registered with ARES or SATERN to attend.

The class will be held Saturday, February 9th at 1:00 pm at the Salvation Army EDS building at 10629 Burt Circle in Omaha.    So that we are better prepared to assist you, you will need to bring your HT with a fully charged battery and the radio’s manual.    We also ask that you register at this link and let us know that you will be coming :

https://tinyurl.com/y9he2etc

DO NOT BRING THE PROGRAMMING CABLE OR SOFTWARE!  We will not be assisting with computer programming of the radio.

We will go over

• setting frequencies
• setting repeater offset and direction
• setting squelch tones
• writing to a memory
• selecting a memory
• locking and unlocking the radio
• adjusting volume and squelch

Because of special requirements for P25, DMR, D-Star, Fusion and other digital modes, we will only be covering standard analog FM programming for your radios for this session.

The International SATERN SSB Voice net is on  14.265.0 MHz – Monday – Saturday at 10:00 am Central Time

The International SATERN Digital net is on 14.065.0 MHz  on Saturday at 12:00 noon Central Time

The Central Territory  SATERN SSB Voice net is  on 7.265.0 MHz on Saturday at 9:30 am Central Time

Omaha SATERN should check into the Douglas County ARES FM Voice net 146.940(-) MHz on Sunday at 9:00 pm CDT