Region 2 North Exercise today

[kc8bdk]

Oakland, Wayne and Macomb county EOC's and Hospitals will be active today for an exercise testing the regional response in case of a pandemic flu outbreak.

Watch the MPSCS system for increased exercise traffic... and also the Amateur areas. ARPSC Amateurs have been asked to play as well.

It would be interesting to hear your comments.

 

[mikey60]

I'd like to hear the comments as well. I was at the Oakland County EOC operating net control for the early part of the exercise on our county frequency, as well as some simplex operations.

Mike

 

[roadman1977]

What talkgroup number are these excersises normally held on?

 

[tutakt]

Here are some of the TGs I heard todayand their use. 2678 Casualty Transport, 2166 identified themself as Oakland Cty EOC, and 2845 unknown user.

 

[jagr707]

Heard a bit today

I made it to a few hospitals today and saw the RACES (ares?) guys working a sweet remote head Icom at the Joe. I could only talk for a bit but they were using both UHF/VHF to communicate with area hospitals. On the scanner, I heard they took down the 800mhz TG to test backup communications. From what I heard, it worked quite well. Luckily the 800 came back up with a ton of "HOSPITAL resume normal 800mhz communications" to the participants.

J

 

[mikey60]

All of the hospitals in Oakland county have Ham radios installed and teams of operators to operate them. Some of the hospitals can still use a few more operators though if anyone is interrested in helping out.

With a couple of exceptions, all of the hospitals have ICOM 2720H dual band radios. We primarily use VHF frequencies for our operations at this point, although we do have a UHF repeater available for us to use once some reception issues are worked out on it.

Mike

 

[kc8bdk]

Thanks All!! its good to hear that we are being recognised more as viable backup comms!!

Mikey, I was your counterpart in Macomb County. It was nice to get to chat at least a couple times. Thanks for your help in passing the messages we did. Its also nice to know that we can operate simples back and forth from EOC to EOC.

Macomb County also has radios installed in all the hospitals (yaesu FT-8800, Dual Band) We also use VHF in times of problems, Mostly simplex communications with our repeater as backup and a resource net. We also could use some extra operators as well.

yes, they did take out the 800 system for the exercise... however, a couple hospitals had problems early on in the game figuring out how to work the 800 system... and RACES was called in early. Then again, thats why we HAVE exercises to show what we need to work on in the coming year.

 

[mikey60]

Mikey, I was your counterpart in Macomb County. It was nice to get to chat at least a couple times. Thanks for your help in passing the messages we did. Its also nice to know that we can operate simples back and forth from EOC to EOC.

I recognized your call when you passed the first message on our frequency, as well as your report on hearing most of our hospitals on simplex. Many of the observers in the room were very happy to hear that tidbit of information.

We were able to hear all of our hospitals simplex. We tested that a couple months ago during our monthly hospital net, and found a few issues at the time. It appears that most if not all of those issues were resolved since.

Feel free to check into our Thursday night nets now on 146.90Mhz with a 100hz PL (at 8:00 PM). I'm usually net control on the Third Thursday of the month.

Just as an FYI for you and any other Oakland County area hams that use the W8OAK Repeater, the 145.25 machine will cease operation sometime before September 1st and all Oakland County ARPSC operations will be on the new 146.900Mhz frequency. It'll be very nice to not have to deal with the cable TV interference anymore!

Mike