NALCO was asked again this year by the City to mobilize Amateur Radio
operators for this event on 27-Apr-2013. 27 of our members and 3
unaffiliated amateur radio operator checked into a directed net and were
given
assignments at 4 fire stations and embedded in 7 neighborhoods. New
for this year, we also were able to deploy a Mobile Operating Position
which setup a multi-purpose platform (multi-band voice plus digital
modes) in direct support of a large neighborhood; and a dedicated
Digital Operating Position. Additionally, we stood up a Simulated EOC
to handle coordination of the event.
On voice we
handled around 40 messages from the neighborhoods during the two hour
exercise; using Packet Radio we passed another 10 messages between
three operators; and we prototyped a Wifi Mesh network that was able to
confirm communication between 6 network nodes and pass digital traffic
(scanned complex written data plus photographs) over the high speed mesh
between two operators via a central server. Finally, we made an
external agency contact with the folks at the Berkeley Unified School
District, handling a round-trip message which was a resource request
from the City to the District.
