Great to see the end-user adoption tick up here. IMHO, that should be the #1 priority for HamWAN at this stage. I would like to see the Everett branch online, and it looks like it may have a path. Who can I talk to, to make that happen? Do the RC folks run regular comm checks? Should they get a conference bridge for their ops? You may also wish to send your message to the official PNW DMR group here: https://dmr.groups.io/g/PNW --Bart On 1/15/2019 9:42 PM, Dylan Ambauen wrote:
Thank you Randy, welcome Red Cross!
Dylan, KI7SBI
On Tue, Jan 15, 2019 at 6:43 PM Randy Neals <randy@neals.ca <mailto:randy@neals.ca>> wrote:
FYI,
Today I attended KC Red Cross in Seattle with Frank, K7RSD. They operate a Red Cross Disaster Services radio room in the basement of the Seattle RC building and have a 50' tower on the roof with VHF and HF antennas / station.
We installed a Mikrotik SXQ on the tower pointing at Beacon-S3. The path is short/visual and about -65dBm / 7 Mbps up/down.
We deployed a small ethernet switch and HamWAN / Seattle ACS IP Phone in the RC radio room, all of which can run on building generator system. Tested SIP phone with Seattle ACS / Seattle EOC. (HamWan ext 8081)
Red Cross team is interested in connectivity from Seattle to Spokane. Apparently Spokane is a staging area for moving disaster assistance west to Seattle. I advised nothing near term, but that longer term something is likely to develop re Ham Networks to Spokane.
I also recognize that the disaster potential/risk factors for E Washington are different than for W Washington. Having a HamWan network extend over the mountains to Yakima/Wenatchee and relying on public Internet to then reach Spokane is likely workable as the typical Earthquake scenario for Puget Sound that emergency planners work to isn't likely to affect infrastructure in Eastern Washington.
The Northwest Region Red Cross is HQ in Seattle. There are branch/chapter offices in Kennewick, Spokane, Bremerton, Bellingham, Everett and Tacoma. Most have a disaster service radio station.
If you have an interest in helping your local Red Cross chapter office with a connection to HamWAN, I can put you in touch with hams at the Seattle regional office and perhaps there is a pull-through effort to get more of the braches on the network.
For our DMR friends... There may be a good opportunity to support NW Red Cross disaster services via DMR talk groups. Given the wide reach of DMR, that might be a tool the RC could have in their kit. The wide spread nature of Red Cross offices and regions, seem to be a poster-child use-case for PNW DMR.
Randy W3RWN Seattle
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