ARES Spring SET

Next Saturday, April 5, we’ll have another ARES drill with Red Cross. Red Cross will run a check in net (open to all, member or not) from their station on Broadway near Cetronia. There are Red Cross hams and they have ham radios. The net will run from 10AM to Noon April 5.
You can “deploy” if you want—drive to a potential deployment spot and check in from there. You are allowed to check into multiple ARC nets, if you can reach them by radio. The truly ambitious can drive around PA.

Part two of this drill is sending a WinLink message with an attachment. Radio attachments need to be really small. What we’re going to do is fill out one line of a spreadsheet, cut that out and save it in .csv format. This is an option in “save as” in Excel and other programs. A csv file is just the data from a spreadsheet—none of the fonts, colors, formatting, etc. When you open it back up (say, in Excel) it puts it into a normal looking spreadsheet but you’ve lost colors, fonts, etc. Not the data—that’s there. That is all we care about anyway.
I have attached a Word document with detailed instructions for this task. The shelter info you will make up (fake info). Be creative if you like. In real life, I’ve been told Red Cross usually picks a High School for a shelter. They like to have a cafeteria and showers. However, you can pick anything.

The drill has two parts and you can do one or both. Your choice.

You are also allowed to use Telnet for WinLink. That’s basically just using WinLink Express (the WinLink computer program) and using the internet to send the message. It’s OK for this drill. Radio is preferred, just so you can make sure you can do it if you have to someday.
Any questions, email me at mikemandell@hotmail.com

73

Mike Mandell

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