Subj : Amateur Radio Newsline (A)
To : All
From : Daryl Stout
Date : Fri Oct 13 2017 08:21 am
Amateur Radio Newsline Report 2085 for Friday, October 13 2017
Amateur Radio Newsline Report Number 2085, with a release date of
Friday, October 13, 2017, to follow in 5-4-3-2-1.
The following is a QST. Amateur radio assistance deepens amid Puerto
Rico's storm damage. Good preparation serves hams well during
Hurricane Nate -- and a North Carolina centenarian gets a birthday
gift only a ham could love. All this and more, as Amateur Radio
Newsline Report 2085, comes your way right now.
(Billboard Cart Here and Intro)
**
HAMS CONTINUE POST-MARIA WORK IN PUERTO RICO
STEPHEN/ANCHOR: We open with an update on amateur assistance to
Puerto Rico. Not quite a month after Hurricane Maria's devastating
hit, hams are helping to get that struggling island on its feet.
Jim Damron, N8TMW, has the details.
JIM: Not all the ham radio assistance going on in Puerto Rico has
been happening on the air. The team of amateur radio operators
deployed to the storm-wracked island, has been able to provide some
real boots-on-the-ground aid in assessing the supply needs at area
hospitals, reuniting families, and even installing a mountaintop
repeater that now covers more than half of Puerto Rico, and serves
part of the U.S. Virgin Islands. The volunteer team who answered
the ARRL's earlier call for assistance, included Gary Sessums,
KC5QCN, Valerie Hotzfeld, NV9L, and Andy Anderson, KE0AYJ. Hams have
also been busy cataloguing data into the "safe and well" website
used by the Red Cross, and providing storm survivors with access to
satellite phones or cellular service to telephone loved ones with
their whereabouts and condition.
The volunteers' deployment has been further assisted by donations of
radios and other equipment. Forty Icom handheld radios were donated
by El Paso Communications Systems, and the Yasme Foundation is making
a repeater available for installation at the Arecibo Observatory.
Meanwhile, the Northern California DX Foundation has made a grant of
$2,500 to the ARRL's Ham Aid Fund, which provides resources to
hurricane-ravaged regions in the Caribbean and the U.S. The grant
will be available for future storm response.
For Amateur Radio Newsline, I'm Jim Damron, N8TMW.
(ARRL)
**
NEW YORK SCHOOL CONNECTS WITH HURRICANE MARIA VICTIMS
STEPHEN/ANCHOR: In one New York City school, teenage hams are also
helping Puerto Rico. Skeeter Nash, N5ASH, has that report.
SKEETER'S REPORT: For a group of amateur radio operators attending
a school in Queens, New York, the ham radio shack inside the school
building may as well have been a classroom. There were big lessons
learned there, in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.
Amateur Radio Club K2GSG has about 20 student members, and the club
itself - like the students - is still fairly new to the airwaves,
having been founded only two years ago. But the youngsters were
ready to step in, and help connect people with people on the
storm-ravaged island, so far from their Jackson Heights
neighborhood.
With the help of their faculty adviser, John Hale, KD2LPM, Station
K2GSG received messages from concerned family members in the United
States, and transferred those words to a Radiogram, limiting the
message to 25 carefully chosen words. The Big Apple Net and the
National Traffic System sent the message out through the system
into Puerto Rico for relay to their intended recipients.
One high school senior, the ham club's president, Lea Marie Medina,
KD2RYU, said that sending these important messages has been very
much on her mind, since the storm. [QUOTE] "I think of these
messages, I read them and I say, this needs to be done, and that's
what I wake up to every morning" [ENDQUOTE] she told WPIX/Channel
11.
According to local media reports, not only are the messages getting
through to Puerto Rico, but right there in the school, other students
in the Queens school are getting a message too: that it's useful and
downright cool to be a ham.
For Amateur Radio Newsline, I'm Skeeter Nash, N5ASH.
(NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)
**
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