Fred Coffer, KF6YYK, builds copper pipe J-Pole antennas, and is willing to make Red Cross VHF low-band and ham radio 2-meter models, for the cost of materials.
Please contact him at +1 650 593 3811.
The San Mateo County (Burlingame) Response Communications Team will be taking the four-hour Psychological First-Aid course at tonight’s weekly meeeting. We’re starting at 6:00 pm in order to finish at a reasonable hour.
This class will help prepare us for the stress of working 12-hour shifts under difficult circumstances–in other words, SOP on a DRO.
On Saturday we completed a milestone with the van. The battery charger has been wired to house battery bank 1 and the starter battery, and wired to an AC extention cord so we can power it while redesigning and rebuilding the AC distribution panel.
After charging for several days, the house batteries are at 13.74 volts; a voltage they haven’t seen in years.
The long run of 6 ga to the generator meant to charge the starter battery, however, hasn’t charged it enough to start the engine, so that will have to be troubleshooted.
We have also run 8 ga zip cord to the DC distribution block on the dashboard, allowing us to power up 4 of the 6 radios installed there.
For anyone coming to Monday night’s comm meeting, I’ll be arriving in the middle afternoon to work on the van.
If you’re around before the meeting starts at 7:00, consider dropping in to lend a hand. Planned projects include:
I’ve also created a Flickr account for ARCBA RCM:
http://www.flickr.com/people/arcba_rcm/
Here are some things you should know about Flickr’s capabilities:
Remember these special Flickr names when sharing photos:
Still playing around with what features we should have here, and it seemed like a Twitter account was a natural:
I’ll figure out how we can have several people able to post to this and pass the instructions around.
I found the following communications plan in the NHQ Annex to the All Hazards Plan for Northern California:
Communications
Communication after an event of this magnitude will be difficult. Landline and cell phone service will be disrupted for a period of two weeks or more. We will utilize the following four methods of communication until phone service is restored:
Worth noting here is that NHQ is expecting us to rely heavily on Ham radio operators.
This brand-new site is devoted to supporting the Response Communications team of the American Red Cross Bay Area chapter.
We are part of Disaster Services Technology, and our role is to support whatever communications–including radio, telephones, and data–is required to support the Red Cross’ response to a disaster in the San Francisco Bay Area.
More details about us will be posted here soon.