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I wanted to bring up how Amateur Radio played an important part in today's Jeep Patrol event in big Bear.
There was a command post set up and staffed by Volunteers from the SBCO Fire Dept. Emergency communications group. I'm not sure of their correct name. This was called "Jeep Command"
They operated two radios under a pop-up shade structure, which was perfect since we had rain most of the afternoon.
They covered two repeaters:
The big Bear Repeater at 147.33 Mhz
The Bertha Pk Repeater at 145.18 Mhz.
Between these two repeaters, just about the whole mountain area was covered.
They had large vinyl covered map of the the SBNF and a list of all the teams going out and the area each team was assigned to cover.
Each team had a ham radio operator assigned to it. Now these were just from a pool of people that volunteered today such as myself that were licensed hams.
Our instructions were:
Keep in contact with Jeep Command and notify them of the trail number the team was on. They tracked this information on the large map using grease pencils.
Contact them if a large trash pile was discovered. This would be one that was more than could be reasonably collected by the team. We came across a large trash and radioed in the lat/long for the location of it.
We were to contact them for any medical emergency, or need for law enforcement.
We were to contact them for any vehicle break-down that would require getting assistance of a tow truck.
The operator's were well seasoned hams and they did a great job. It would have been great for some of our newer hams to hear them and pick up a few pointers of proper radio procedures during an emergency.
They played an important role today keeping track of over 110 Jeeps in 10 to 12 teams.
There was a command post set up and staffed by Volunteers from the SBCO Fire Dept. Emergency communications group. I'm not sure of their correct name. This was called "Jeep Command"
They operated two radios under a pop-up shade structure, which was perfect since we had rain most of the afternoon.
They covered two repeaters:
The big Bear Repeater at 147.33 Mhz
The Bertha Pk Repeater at 145.18 Mhz.
Between these two repeaters, just about the whole mountain area was covered.
They had large vinyl covered map of the the SBNF and a list of all the teams going out and the area each team was assigned to cover.
Each team had a ham radio operator assigned to it. Now these were just from a pool of people that volunteered today such as myself that were licensed hams.
Our instructions were:
Keep in contact with Jeep Command and notify them of the trail number the team was on. They tracked this information on the large map using grease pencils.
Contact them if a large trash pile was discovered. This would be one that was more than could be reasonably collected by the team. We came across a large trash and radioed in the lat/long for the location of it.
We were to contact them for any medical emergency, or need for law enforcement.
We were to contact them for any vehicle break-down that would require getting assistance of a tow truck.
The operator's were well seasoned hams and they did a great job. It would have been great for some of our newer hams to hear them and pick up a few pointers of proper radio procedures during an emergency.
They played an important role today keeping track of over 110 Jeeps in 10 to 12 teams.
UTM was derived in the 1940s, I figure anybody who is adept enough to learn enough electronics to get licensed for ham ought be able to learn multiple coordinate systems.
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