M.E.T.E.R.S. Newsletter - April 2005

A Monthly Publication of the Middle East Tennessee Emergency Radio Service, Inc.

(METERS is a registered non-profit service organization based in Knoxville serving all the surrounding area.)

Editor: Larry Osterman, W8JYQ, E-mail to w8jyq@arrl.net -- METERS website: www.metersinc.org

 

Next Meeting Date: 7 PM Tuesday, April 26, 2005 at the American Red Cross Bldg.,

6921 Middlebrook Pike, Knoxville, TN 37909 (1/2 Mile West of the Main Post Office)

 

 

President's Statement for April 2005

By Gary Buczkowski, AG4XO (E-mail: ag4xo(INSERT_AT_SIGN)arrl.net)

 

This has been a very busy spring. Let's take a moment to reflect on what we have accomplished. Then we will take a look at what we need to do next. First, many of us have had Skywarn training and TEMA HazMat training, and are now involved in EmComm Level 1 training. Also, we have been working diligently on our hospital ham radio project. In fact we have invested more of our time on the hospital project than on any other, and this is as it should be.

We have gained the trust of many hospital officials, county officials, and state officials. We have done so because we have acted professionally and forthrightly, and in every case we have done what we said we would do. Furthermore, we have typically under-promised and over-delivered. We have done more than we agreed to do, and we have done so without asking for anything in return. This is the embodiment of the true volunteer spirit, and I am proud to be part of it!

Please bear with me as I reflect a little on what are doing, the challenges we face, and how we can successfully face the future. Let's begin with what we are doing.

 

What We Are Doing

 

METERS, Inc. serves our community by serving the first responders who take care of us in an emergency. We provide our served agencies with tactical (local) and strategic (long haul) communications, when regular channels are unavailable. To do this we must be trained in efficient and effective communications techniques. In addition, we need to be trained in the Incident Command System (ICS), now known as the National Incident Management System (NIMS). We also need to be aware of the potential hazards should we need to respond in the field. That's why many of us have taken TEMA courses on Hazardous Materials, and Weapons of Mass Destruction, etc.

 

Today we are being asked to support a wider community because some counties in our part of Tennessee may not have a close relationship with their local amateur radio operators. In fact, some counties do not have an established emergency communications group. Sadly, METERS currently does not have enough interested hams to do all that we are being asked to do. So what are we to do?

The first thing we must do is support the agencies that we have already made a commitment to support. As I noted above, we are obligated to achieve and maintain a high level of training and professionalism so that we are ready and able to provide emergency communications when needed. The second thing we can do is reach out to hams in the counties that do not have an organized Emcomm group. METERS can provide guidance and support to those hams that wish to help. The third thing we can do is increase our membership of dedicated hams. The last two items are ones where you can help (more on how you can help, below).

 

As you can see, we face a challenge to increase our membership. But first I'd like to describe one of the biggest challenges we face.

 

The Challenges We Face

 

From my perspective, we, as amateur radio operators, have become very complacent about our usefulness to society. What I mean by this is that we often assume that our frequency allocations are a "right" instead of a privilege. We expect that because we provide emergency communications from time to time, our frequencies will always be there for us to use. I think that this thinking is naive. To understand my position I encourage you to listen to other radio services, particularly public service bands. What you hear may surprise you.

 

None of the public service organizations are specifically focused on communications. Rather, they use radios as a tool to get their job done. What may surprise you is how professional they are on the radio. They use standardized communications protocols that are as efficient as they are effective. Even the National Park Service rangers sound more professional than typical ham radio operators. My point is that they are trained to use professional radio techniques. Hams typically are not trained. We do learn from each other, and we are therefore likely to pick up some bad habits or inefficient techniques.

 

Of course, some might say that ham radio is a hobby and public service employees are paid professionals, but we can still act professionally! And we can still accept the challenge of becoming trained in professional radio practices. In fact, we must do so, for our own survival.

 

I submit to you that we are falling behind. The Department of Homeland Security has been giving grants for municipalities to purchase new radio systems that enable them to intercommunicate with other related agencies. This is the so-called interoperability theme that we have all heard much about over the last year or two. What this potentially means is a lessening of the need for services of ham radio. My concern is that we shouldn't let ourselves fall behind our served agencies. We need to get training in proper communication techniques and protocols, and we need to stay trained. We also need to act professionally when we respond in a communications emergency. The only way to do so is to practice professional operating protocols.

 

Facing the Future

 

Why did I mention membership levels above? The answer is simple. We need more members and we need more trained emergency communicators. And in order for METERS to meet its commitments to our served agencies, we need more dues paying members.

 

You may be asking yourself, so what? Well, the answer to that question is so that you can help. If every member convinced three other dedicated people to join METERS, then we would be well on our way to meeting our service obligations.

 

Your board of directors can't do it all, and we certainly can't do it alone. We need your help. Are you proud of METERS? Do you think our mission is important? Then you can help by spreading the word. You can invite someone to come to one of our meetings. You can talk to your friends and contacts in other counties to see if they are interested in participating in the hospital radio program.

 

Like any big problem or challenge, we can over come it by breaking it down into smaller bits and then sharing the load. Please reach out to hams that might be interested and convince them to come to the next METERS meeting. You can make a difference!

 

I hope to see you, and an interested friend, Tuesday evening, April 26, 2005 at 7:00PM EDT at the American Red Cross building on Middlebrook Pike for our April general meeting.

 

 

Commission for METERS on New ARRL Memberships and Renewals

By Tyra, AI4KG, METERS Treasurer

 

METERS is an ARRL-affiliated group and as such we can receive a commission of $15 for each new ARRL membership application and $2 for each ARRL membership renewal that we process. The procedure is fairly simple. Print an ARRL membership/renewal application form from the www.arrl.org website, fill it out, and bring it to the next METERS meeting with your ARRL dues (either cash or check payable to METERS, with note stating for ARRL membership).

 

I will send the applications and dues to the ARRL so METERS can receive the commission. The ARRL dues include a 12-month subscription to "QST", which has many useful and insightful articles about anything and everything you want to know about amateur radio. Your membership also gives you access to the ARRL website, including the classified ad section, archives, and newsletters. Please join ARRL (or renew your membership) through METERS. We will all benefit from it. 

 

Congratulations

 

Tyra Buczkowski is now Extra class licensee, AI4KG. Congratulations Tyra.

Please note Tyra's email address is now: ai4kg(INSERT_AT_SIGN)metersinc.org

 

Hospital Plan

 

Anyone interested in joining the Baptist Regional or Children's Hospital team, please contact Tyra AI4KG. Or, if you're available to assist on other hospital teams, anywhere in the area, please let us know. This is a superb service that you can provide for your community. Email: ai4kg(INSERT_AT_SIGN)metersinc.org

 

 

ParkWest Hospital Almost Ready for Prime Time

 

Our initial meeting with the folks at ParkWest took place at 6 PM Thursday April 14^th.  Jerry KF4LCN, the PW Administrative Coordinator, introduced us to the Director of Critical Care Services, and the Director of Safety. After a brief meeting in the hospital's emergency operations center (also the executive conference room), we got a look at the radio switch room, the antennas, and the Icom 706 in a suitcase. We had some discussion on where best to operate the 706 for the next SET, and determined that a quiet office space could be co-used with hospital admin personnel away from their internal EOC, but close enough for internal communication.

 

Attending for METERS were: Gary AG4XO, Larry W8JYQ, Frank WD8CAD, and Merle KD6FBT. Larry, Frank, Merle, and Charles K4KKH are the initial PW team members however others are invited to volunteer their services with Gary, Tyra, or Alan Sims.   -lao

 

 

The Dayton Hamvention

Friday thru Sunday, May 20^th - 22^nd , 2005

There is something hair tingling to go through the gate and come upon the 2500 spaces in the outside flea market at the Hamvention for the first time. Where else will you see flags from all the states and a dozen foreign countries flying from verticals and towers spaced 20 feet apart as far as the eye can see? When was the last time you saw an 18-inch diameter graduated crank-up mast rising 60 feet through the roof of a small Dodge van, with a sign saying, "Take it all for $6,000"? And then there are dozens of wholesaler tents with cable and hardware at prices well below other dealers wholesale. (And some with prices well above retail! Be careful folks!) Inside, the seminars, manufacturer and major retailer booths, and specialty booths of groups like Collins Collectors Association, and IARU, are fun stops also.  

 

Most of us have been up to the "big show" at least once in our "ham" life, but if you haven't made the trip, this may be the best year in many to get there. ARRL is holding their annual convention in conjunction with this year's Dayton event, so there will be extra goodies to see and buy. Go to www.hamvention.org to get tickets on line, and while at it you might consider buying the bus tickets from Salem Mall. Salem Mall is a deserted old shopping center with lots of free parking located just a mile west of the Hara Arena site, but on a rainy or windy day, you probably won't feel like walking that mile along busy Shiloh Springs Ave. (no sidewalks for most of that distance) Getting to last year's event took us about 5 hours up I-75, getting off I-75 at US35, going west on 35 to Rt. 49, then north on 49 to Salem Ave. and jogging backwards a few blocks to Salem Mall. (Get directions on mapquest.com.) Most close-up motel rooms are sold out by now, but there will be some available downtown and south of Dayton. It's a memorable experience, even the 7^th time around.    -lao

 

 

History from PBS

Before radio and international television, there was telegraph and international cable. PBS did a recap on the man behind the Atlantic cable, Cyrus Field, on April 11^th, and his story is a testiment to perseverence. In 1854, at age 30, Field had made his fortune as a paper merchant, and found a new field to focus on, along with a money partner, Peter Cooper. Telegraph traffic had been established by 1851 (although not serving E. Tennessee until ten years later) and Field set up a planning meeting to finance an Atlantic cable connection for the telegraph. A guy named Samuel Morse had come up with a scheme for standardizing  telegraph signals and Field thought that could be a money-maker if used in communicating with Europe. He got Congress to pass the Atlantic Cable Act to provide some funding, and the US Navy to help, using the USS Niagara. British investors used a comparable ship, since neither could carry all the cable needed, and they met at the half-way point in mid-Atlantic to splice the cable. They must have had a calm water day! This first cable system was completed in August 1858, with messages between Queen Victoria and President Buchanan. The system failed 23 days later, with lots of money lost and Field disgraced. 

 

Eight years later, in 1866, with the Civil War behind him, Field put together another investment team and acquired a ship, the HMS Great Eastern, that was big enough to carry all the cable for the transatlantic lay-down. No splices required. His advisor this time was a physicist named William Thompson, also known to posterity as Lord Kelvin. It took 13 years from concept to conclusion, but the system was completed the right way in 1866 and we finally had the means to communicate with Europe within minutes, not weeks. Without the cable, and the Morse code, who knows how long it might have been to establish this link. Field died in 1892. Some of us still use Morse code.   -lao 

 

 

Unready For This Attack!

 (From the Washington Post page A19, Saturday, April 16, 2005)

 

By Sen. Jon Kyl (R. AZ)

 

  Recently a Senate Judiciary subcommittee of which I am chairman held a hearing on a major threat to the American people, one that could come not only from terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda but from rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea.

 

  An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on the American homeland, said one of the distinguished scientists who testified at the hearing, is one of only a few ways that the United States could be defeated by its enemies, terrorist or otherwise. And it is probably the easiest. A single Scud missile, carrying a single nuclear weapon, detonated at the appropriate altitude, would interact with the Earth's atmosphere, producing an electromagnetic pulse radiating down to the surface at the speed of light. Depending on the location and size of the blast, the effect would be to knock out already stressed power grids and other electrical systems across much, or even all, of the continental United States, for months if not years.

 

Few, if any, people would die right away. But the loss of power would have a cascading effect on all aspects of U.S. society. Communication would be largely impossible. Lack of refrigeration would leave food rotting in warehouses, exacerbated by a lack of transportation as those vehicles still working simply ran out of gas (which is pumped with electricity). The inability to sanitize and distribute water would quickly threaten public health, not to mention the safety of anyone in the path of the inevitable fires, which would rage unchecked. And as we have seen in areas of natural and other disasters, such circumstances often result in a fairly rapid breakdown of social order.

 

American society has grown so dependent on computer and other electrical systems that we have created our own Achilles' heel of vulnerability, ironically much greater than those of other, less developed nations. When deprived of power, we are in many ways helpless, as the New York City blackout made clear. In that case, power was restored quickly because adjacent areas could provide help. But a large-scale burnout caused by a broad EMP attack would create a much more difficult situation. Not only would there be nobody nearby to help, it could take years to replace destroyed equipment.

 

  Transformers for regional substations, for example, are massive pieces of equipment that are no longer manufactured in the United States and typically take more than a year to build. In the words of another witness at the hearing, "The longer the basic outage, the more problematic and uncertain the recovery of any [infrastructure system] will be. It is possible -- indeed, seemingly likely -- for sufficiently severe functional outages to become mutually reinforcing, until a point at which the degradation . . . could have irreversible effects on the country's ability to support any large fraction of its present human population." Those who survived, he said, would find themselves transported back to the United States of the 1880s.

 

  This threat may sound straight out of Hollywood, but it is very real. CIA Director Porter Goss recently testified before Congress about nuclear material missing from storage sites in Russia that may have found its way into terrorist hands, and FBI Director Robert Mueller has confirmed new intelligence that suggests al Qaeda is trying to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction. Iran has surprised intelligence analysts by describing the mid-flight detonations of missiles fired from ships on the Caspian Sea as "successful" tests. North Korea exports missile technology around the world; Scuds can easily be purchased on the open market for about $100,000 apiece. A terrorist organization might have trouble putting a nuclear warhead "on target" with a Scud, but it would be much easier to simply launch and detonate in the atmosphere. No need for the risk and difficulty of trying to smuggle a nuclear weapon over the border or hit a particular city. Just launch a cheap missile from a freighter in international waters (al Qaeda is believed to own about 80 such vessels) and make sure to get it a few miles in the air.

 

  Fortunately, hardening key infrastructure systems and procuring vital backup equipment such as transformers is both feasible and, compared with the threat, relatively inexpensive, according to a comprehensive report on the EMP threat by a commission of prominent experts. But it will take leadership by the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Department, and other federal agencies, along with support from Congress, all of which have yet to materialize.

 

  The 9/11 Commission Report stated that our biggest failure was one of "imagination." No one imagined that terrorists would do what they did on Sept. 11. Today few Americans can conceive of the possibility that terrorists could bring our society to its knees by destroying everything we rely on that runs on electricity. But this time we've been warned, and we'd better be prepared to respond.

 

(The writer is a Republican senator from Arizona and chairman of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on terrorism, technology and homeland security.

 

 

From the News - Notes on East Coast SET, April 4^th thru 8^th.

 

US to hold Chemical and Biological Attack Exercise

(This appeared in some local papers on April 3^rd  2005)

 

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US security officials are set to begin a five-day exercise that simulates chemical and biological terrorist attacks in the eastern US states of Connecticut and New Jersey. The exercise, dubbed "TOPOFF 3" (short for Top Official) will take place in the Connecticut town of New London and in two counties in Eastern New Jersey, the Department of Homeland Security announced.

 

  Top US officials will monitor events from Washington, while security officials in Canada and Britain will follow developments at their end and focus on maintaining communication channels open with their US counterparts.

 

  According to the script, terrorists planning to attack New York and Boston, suspect their plans have been compromised and launch a premature attack by dispersing a biological agent from a car in New Jersey.

 

  As seriously injured people begin to flood local hospitals, the chemical attack that had been planned for Boston also is launched prematurely -- in the town of New London, Connecticut, some 250 kilometers away.

 

  "The scenario is plausible, but purely fictional," according to the

Department of Homeland Security statement.

 

  "Although the government views both of these types of threat as credible, the weapons were not chosen on the basis of intelligence regarding specific terrorist plans." While real weapons will not be used, participants "will respond as if the exercise was a real attack with real weapons and real consequences," the statement added.

 

  More than 10,000 people will participate in the exercise, which is dubbed "Atlantic Blue" in Britain and "Triple Play" in Canada. Thirteen other countries, including Mexico, have sent observers to the event.

 

  "TOPOFF 3" is the third exercise involving simulated terrorist chemical, nuclear or biological attacks. The first was held in May 2000 and the second in May 2003 with simultaneous simulated attacks in Seattle and Chicago.

 

  "The TOPOFF exercises are a key piece of the United States homeland security national preparedness efforts. By responding realistically to

simulated attacks, we are able to identify our strengths and weaknesses and make our national response system stronger," said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

 

Copyright METERS Inc. (2004 ~ 2005)