May 2, 2007

The Virginia Department of Emergency Management (VDEM) held a major exercise called VERTEX 2007 from April 23 through April 26, 2007. The exercise was intended to test our readiness for dealing with a Cat 3 hurricane making landfall in the VA coast. The ham station at the VA Emergency Operation Center (VAEOC) was active as W4ZA during this exercise.

ARES / RACES personnel from around the state were invited to check-in with VAEOC on April 25 and 26 using a variety of modes including HF and VHF voice plus packet. A number of nets were active during the exercise. Read on for some of the exercise wrap up reports.

May 5, 2007
Terry B. Hebert
Operations Watch Officer
VDEM / VEOC

To All:

I wanted to thank all of those you participated in this years VERTEX Exercise. From the results achieved by our Amateur Groups both in the VEOC and in the field it was a success. I have attached my After Action Review (AAR) that was submitted to the planning group with some areas that need to be improved.

Below is a break down on total contacts made by mode and frequency:

• 147.330 (32)
• 147.660 (33)
• 146.880 (14)
• 3.947 (31)
• 7.241 (2)
• 145.730 - Packet (32)

Again, thanks to everyone for your support.

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After Action Report filed by Terrt Hebert with VDEM

Concerns and Solutions

Concern:

There is a lack of evolvement of VDEM RACES Amateur Operations in the initial planning stages of the Exercise.

Solution:

Involve the VDEM Amateur Liaison and the State RACES Officer in the initial and ongoing planning phases of the exercise. Don’t consider the amateur operation as a last minute second thought.
This is the State’s backup redundant communications link.

 

Concern:

Lack of depth in the VEOC Races operation. It would be difficult to maintain a 24/7 station at the VEOC beyond a 48 to 72 hour event.

Solution:

Recruit more local amateur radio operators for EOC deployment. Develop a comprehensive training program and SOP for the RACES operation.

 

Concern:

Lack of cooperation among the different amateur groups throughout the State and even among the local jurisdictions.

Solution:

Establish a common goal for all amateurs active in emergency communications. Bring all emergency communications groups together to discuss their differences and solve any problems that exist among them.

Best Practices

VDEM / VEOC RACES was able to provide enough radio operators from the local amateur community to handle all of the emergency traffic was passed to the VEOC by the participating localities and agencies that included:

• VDH EOC
• Norfolk Medical Examiners Office
• Newport News EOC
• VA Beach EOC
• Norfolk EOC
• Spotsylvania EOC
• Carroll Co EOC
• Portsmouth EOC
• James City Co EOC
• Norfolk Sentara Hospital
• NWS Blacksburg
• Loudoun Co EOC
• Prince William Co EOC
• Buckingham Co EOC
• Charlottesville, Albemarle EOC
• Hertford Co NC EOC
• Winslow CNC EOC
• NWS Sterling Va.

There were 142 contacts made on HF, VHF and packet modes including normal check ins, Initial Damage Assessments, Local Situation Reports and Resource Requests. The Equipment worked well except for some inter mode problems caused by antennas being to close together.

VEOC Needs

• VEOC RACES needs a more effective TNC for expanded digital communications modes. An additional FM radio and antenna is needed to monitor all of the emergency frequencies.
• Establish a more effective call down and alerting system for local jurisdiction to be notified to activate their amateur stations.

Policies and procedures, plans, and documents that need updated or revised.

• Need to update current RACES SOP.
• Recruit and train more local amateur radio operators for duty in the VEOC.
• Encourage more amateurs to become involved in both local and statewide emergency amateur communications.
  

May 2, 2007

Overall Impressions:

First, from what I was able to overhear, the number of participants and the scope of the involvement by Amateurs in the western part of the Section was impressive.  Particularly so, in that these people were not directly involved in the exercise, and most learned of it on fairly short notice both of which contribute greatly to how this participation needs to be evaluated.

On the ODEN / D I was somewhat disappointed in the propagation, requiring messages to be sent multiple times as well as requiring relays.  A weakness of the Chip64 software was revealed in that in order to relay, you cannot open the log file while the program is running.  Even if one had perfect copy that was to be relayed, I don’t think it would be possible to cut and past from the scrolling received text, so the only real alternative possible is to close the program, go to the log file, copy the relevant text, paste into notepad or other text editor, edit, save and then go back to the program and the net.  While this works, it is less than ideal.  Also less than ideal is using a mode that doesn’t provide direct access to W4ZA.  Having to get a message requiring relay to a station that is going to subsequently relay to W4ZA is cumbersome at best, and will be its own disaster at worst.

Given these constraints, I found that the IC-213 message form particularly unsuited to this mode.  There is a great deal of unnecessary blank (no data) transmission required, and I never appreciated the implications of not having a message number, until I saw the reply from K7BC going back to W4GHS.  Using the 213 requires the sending back of the original message for the reply to have any context, and this just doesn’t work in my opinion.  I am glad we had the opportunity to see this in action, but I believe we would best serve our clients if we focus on the ARRL format.  We can already include all the relevant information, in that the message is addressed to someone, and has a signature.  We don’t have to hold to the tradition of 25 word or character groups, we already have low level of error correction capability by the check, and we have the advantage of being able to deal with a reply without having the redundancy of including the original text.  Most of us would have to adapt to dealing with messages that include the time as part of the preamble, which we normally don’t do.

Packet radio using the Airmail interface was very impressive.  My experience with packet prior to using Airmail has not been favorable.  I have tried on two North Anna VOPEX exercises to use packet with W4ZA and was unsuccessful both times.  In part this was due to the high volume of normal packet BBS bulletin and newsgroup traffic that was not suspended for the exercise, and in part due to having to construct an ad hoc path.  Airmail, by virtue of using pre-established connection pathways changes this mode dramatically.  Based on my limited experience (I have been running Airmail for about 5 weeks) sending and receiving NTS traffic, and the robust and reliable performance demonstrated during VERT, I think we need to give serious and concerted additional support to Earl (KR4MA) and the Section digital network.  This mode using Airmail provides optimum efficiency by managing network load by virtue of node store and forward, absolute error correction, destination hard copy, and automatic operation.  These are all significant pluses that we need to further exploit.  While all packet activity for the exercise was either messages from my station uploaded to W4ZA or messages left for my station to download from W4ZA on the next scheduled connection, I noticed on Thursday, that W4ZA-12 was periodically connecting to my Airmail BBS looking for traffic.  I will have to check further with Earl, but I believe that this implies that other local stations could exchange traffic with W4ZA through my Airmail BBS thus making my station an additional functional node for the exercise.

Stations participating from District 03 (as of the time of this report)

WW4GW        Gordon EC for Buckingham and Cumberland Counties operating from home station and from Buckingham EOC
KI4PXU         Greg EC for Powhatan operating from the Martha Jefferson Hospital station
KG4ZWH       Steve operating from the Blue Ridge Poison Control Center at UVA Hospital
K4DND          Dave DEC 03 operating from home station

April 26, 2007

The VDN was activated as ODEN/D using the spread spectrum Chip64 software. Art Williams, W4TY, VDN Net Manager sent in this wrap-up report ...

Ham radio is like golf. It teaches us humility. Just when we think we know what is going on, everything changes.

Saturday tests with the VDN had showed promise for good to fair signals on 80 meters at 1300 hours, and poor to none on 40 meters.

Then VERTEX 2007 found poor propagation on HF on Wednesday, April 25, not only for ODEN/D (Digital), but also SSB on 40 and 80 meters.

Following a suggestion, ODEN/D went to 1000 and 1300 hours on Thursday, April 26. Both times provided good propagation. There were 6 QNI and 2 QTC at 1000. There were 10 QNI and 1 QTC at 1300 (and 2 informal requests to call W4ZA on 146.88 MHz). Relaying messages between stations will probably be a necessary procedure, as we are spread out over a large area.

As AG4YU said, "It was very instructive."

Thanks to all who took part.