The ARES Letter

In This Issue:

ARES® Briefs, Links

An AUXCOMM class will be conducted in Orlando, Florida, February 3-5, 2025, prior to the Orlando HamCation®. This is one of the best classes to take to foster understanding of where we fit into the overall NIMS/ICS structure. For Florida licensees interested in deployment outside of your county, this course is mandatory, per the Florida Department of Emergency Management. — ARRL Northern Florida Section Emergency Coordinator Arc Thames, W4CPD

New emergency communications courses are now available from the ARRL that are aligned with the new ARES Task Book. Take the courses. Study the task book.

Use January contests and operating events as communications exercises (COMMEXs)—Preparedness and professionalism are what local and state authorities are expecting when they reach out to VOAD (Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster) groups like ARRL ARES® that offer services no matter the season or temperature. Operating events such as Winter Field Day, the ARRL January VHF Contest, and POTA (Parks on the Air®) allow exercising one’s equipment and winter weather personal protection equipment (PPE) during the colder months of the year. — Blair ARES Alert!, January 2025 issue, Blair County, Pennsylvania ARES

Read the news report on the efforts of Aiken County (Florida) Emergency Manager Paul Matthews, KE4SC, during the Hurricane Helene response. — Aiken County, Florida, Emergency Coordinator Carl Juvrud, KP2L

The Brickyard Landing HOA of Richmond, California, hosted a one-day Technician license class and VE test session on Saturday, November 9, in Richmond. The homeowners’ association has an active amateur radio/Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) presence and supports “reasonable” antenna requests to further that objective. They are also looking at creating a club station in their common area facility for their licensed members. City Councilwoman Soheila Bana, KO6GTV, who passed her Technician license exam, is the head of the City of Richmond Public Safety Committee and wants to bring VE test sessions to the city’s community center so that more residents can discover amateur radio and be better prepared to respond in the event of a city-wide emergency. —ARRL Pacific Division Vice Director John Litz, NZ6Q

Pictured with Councilwoman Soheila Bana, KO6GTV, are ARRL Pacific Division Vice Director John Litz, NZ6Q, and Rocky Saunders, KM6NKV, who helped organize the event for the community.

The Civil Air Patrol, an ARRL partner and MOU stakeholder, will offer emergency radio training to residents of Homer, Alaska, and surrounding areas. [Read the ARRL/CAP MOU]. The Alaska Wing of the CAP, a U.S. Air Force Auxiliary organization, is working to prepare communities throughout the state for emergency situation response by providing radios and the training to use them in the event of catastrophic events. Homer-area community members with any level of radio experience, including no prior experience, are invited to take part in training sessions that began in December. This radio communication training opportunity is open to community members of all ages, including youth and adults, though they must register to become part of the Homer CAP squadron in order to participate. The project, also known as “Twenty Seconds More,” is part of an ongoing effort to improve Alaska’s ability to respond to a disaster, according to 1st Lt. Michele Bremer. — FEMA Disaster Emergency Communications News Clippings and Topics of Interest Vol. 14 Issue 23, December 1-15, 2024

Take the new (as of April, 2024) Emergency Support Function (ESF) #2—Communications course on the FEMA Emergency Management Institute site.

The Robert E. and Patricia Schmidt Foundation has provided a $13,100 grant to the Ellis County (Texas) Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ECARES). The money will be used to purchase equipment. The group hopes to have the equipment up and running by the end of the month. ECARES is dedicated to providing volunteer support communications for public safety in Ellis County. The group provides communication capabilities as requested by the Ellis County Fire and Emergency Management Department in situations in which local communications are compromised. ECARES also provides local SKYWARN spotters during times of severe weather and reports to the National Weather Service office in Dodge City. — FEMA Disaster Emergency Communications News Clippings and Topics of Interest Vol. 14 Issue 24, December 16-31, 2024

Hurricane Watch Net Remembers Long Time Volunteer Terry Redding, W6LMJ, Silent Key. – ARRL News, 01/09/2025

Call for QST Articles About ARRL Field Day

QST, the membership journal of ARRL, seeks manuscripts about ARRL Field Day for possible publication in the June 2025 Field Day issue. This is your ARES group’s chance to share your Field Day successes and lessons learned, so other groups will benefit from your experience. Here’s what QST is looking for:

1,200 to 1,800 words — Tell the story of your Field Day operation with a “how-to” angle, so readers will understand how to duplicate your success.
2-5 high-resolution images – Include captions that explain what’s happening in the photos, the names and call signs of any hams pictured, and the name (and call sign, if applicable) of the person who took each photo.
Send the manuscript and photos to qst@arrl.org by April 1.

ARES® Amateur Radio and Public Service

Not to be Missed: Next Month’s Orlando HamCation® to Feature Emcomm-Rich Forums and Programs

The venerable Orlando (Florida) HamCation will host the ARRL Southeastern Division Convention on February 7-9, 2025. The schedule of forums and programs devoted to state-of-the-art emergency communications topics is most impressive this year:

Disaster Response Communications & Auxcomm Florida (Roger Lord and David Byrum, KA4EBX, presenters)
SHARES, What is it? Why Should I Care? (Doug Lynch, W4DBL)
Near Vertical Incidence Skywave (NVIS) Antenna for EmComm (Gary Spangneberg, KF4GGK)
Army and Air Force MARS: Joint Mission to Support the Troops (Pat Johnson, Julio Schroedel, KJ4AVE)
SARNET (Statewide Amateur Radio Network) (Randy Pierce, AG4UU, and Joe Poerschke, WB4HIS)
An AUXCOMM Class will be conducted in Orlando, Florida, February 3-5, 2025, prior to the Orlando HamCation® (see above). Information and signup.

HamCation goers will also have ample opportunities to ask questions of, and render opinions with emcomm luminaries (Section Managers, Section Emergency Coordinators, ARRL HQ staff and others at the ARRL and ARES forums). See you in Orlando!

A Section Manager’s New Year’s Message

As we ring in 2025, I want to extend heartfelt wishes to all of you for a year filled with health, happiness, and plenty of time on the air. This fresh start offers us the opportunity to not only grow as amateur radio operators but also strengthen our connections with the communities we serve. Together, let’s make 2025 a year of impact, innovation, and service. Our radio service is more than just a technical pursuit—it’s a bridge to our communities. This year, let’s make a commitment to step out, get involved, and make a difference. Our guiding light for 2025 is: “Elevate, Educate, Energize: Ham Radio for Our Communities.”

Elevate: Be present in your community. Ham radio is at its best when we’re actively engaged with the people around us. From supporting local events like marathons, parades, and emergency preparedness drills, to partnering with schools and civic organizations, let’s show our neighbors what amateur radio can do. Every event we participate in strengthens the visibility and value of our hobby while fostering goodwill.

Educate: Share the passion. Every interaction is an opportunity to educate others about the power and purpose of amateur radio. Consider hosting public demonstrations, inviting others to Field Day, or giving presentations at local schools or clubs. By educating others, we open the door for new operators to join us and bring fresh energy.

Energize: Lead by example. We are ambassadors for amateur radio, and the enthusiasm we bring to our activities can inspire others. Attend community events with your radio gear, share your experiences, and offer hands-on demonstrations. Your passion can be contagious, sparking interest and curiosity in the next generation of operators. Supporting our communities goes hand-in-hand with supporting one another. Let’s focus on building stronger local clubs, mentoring new operators, and being the friendly, helpful faces of ham radio. When disaster strikes, let’s be ready to assist served agencies, showing the world the critical role we play in emergency communications. This year, let’s aim to leave a positive and lasting impact in every community we touch. Amateur radio is a gift, and when we share it generously, everyone benefits. Thank you for your dedication to this incredible hobby and to the communities we’re privileged to serve. Here’s to a phenomenal year of growth, connection, and service. Together, let’s Elevate, Educate, and Energize—not just for ham radio, but for our communities. — Scott Roberts, KK4ECR, ARRL Northern Florida Section Manager, QST NFL, newsletter of the ARRL Northern Florida Section, January 2025 issue

Hurricane Milton: Sarasota (Florida) ARES Serves Hospital

The Sarasota County, Florida, Amateur Radio Emergency Service (SRQARES) group was activated by their served agency — the Sarasota Memorial Hospital — during Hurricane Milton. SRQARES conducts annual drills with the hospital staff. If a storm is imminent, hospital officials may request up to two qualified radio operators to deploy to each of the hospital’s four Gulf Coast sites, to provide backup communications services.

For Milton, SRQARES established and maintained continuous voice and Winlink comms for 36 hours, from before the onset of tropical storm force winds through Hurricane Milton’s landfall, with 100 mph winds, and until the storm had passed.

As it happened, hospital primary communications held up, but staff was grateful to SRQARES to have mobilized and operated continuously during Milton for “when all else fails.”

The hospital uses secure intranet, telephone, and 800 MHz digital commercial radios for primary communications, but also had the foresight to recognize that, as the largest health care network in Sarasota County, redundancy is wise.

“With a Category 5 storm threatening the Suncoast, we were glad to have their expertise on hand to help communicate internally with our teams and external relief agencies if our normal communications systems failed,” said Kim Savage, public information officer for Sarasota Memorial Health System. “Fortunately, we did not need to utilize their services, but we thank them staying with us throughout the storm.”

Both SRQARES and the hospitals continuously monitor the weather, entering “standby” status should a tropical storm pose a threat. SRQARES’s fully-trained volunteer operators arrived at each of the system’s four sites along with the hospitals’ hurricane response teams, providing 24/7 coverage from Sarasota in the north to North Port in the south, across an area of 40 miles. Each operator brought a “GoBox” dual-band VHF/UHF radio pre-programmed with more than 30 duplex repeaters and simplex frequencies. In addition to voice capabilities, each GoBox, when paired with a laptop, supports Winlink e-mail-by-radio to transmit and receive e-mail, spreadsheets, etc. Naturally, all transmissions must be HIPAA compliant.

Through the existing partnership, robust antennas are on top of each hospital facility, with coax cable fed to a radio operator position in each facility, so that on arrival one can be operational within minutes via plug-and-play. In addition to the rooftop antennas, infrastructure utilized by SRQARES includes repeaters at several locations in Sarasota County provided by the Sarasota Emergency Radio Club. The Venice-based Tamiami Amateur Radio Club also makes its repeater in Englewood available in an emergency.

SRQARES is proud to serve Sarasota Memorial, the region’s only public, community-owned health system. Contact for SRQARES: Scott Smith, KO4SQK, Public Information Officer

SRQARES Go-Box (courtesy Scott Smith, KO4SQK, Public Information Officer)

Essential Guide to Two-Way Radio Communication

By Scott Read, KM6RFB

Shorthand expressions and codes are useful for radio communication, especially when you need to transfer information quickly. It’s important to make sure that everyone’s on the same page with the terminology you’re using and what it all means, so make sure all radio users know and understand all the terms in advance. You may decide to just use plain language, or use just a few of these terms instead of all of them – whichever helps your team to communicate effectively.

Common terminology in radio communication is crucial because it ensures clear and concise information exchange between individuals or groups, especially in critical situations like emergencies/disasters, by eliminating confusion arising from different interpretations of words or phrases, allowing for swift and effective action; essentially, everyone on the same radio channel understands the meaning of each term used, leading to better coordination and response times.

In amateur radio, we tend to use terminology that has been applied to and accepted in our community, deeply rooted in our long history, particularly from the historic use of telegraphy with Morse code stemming from the 1850s.

In the world of the public safety community we serve, however, amateur radio operators need to shift our mindset to using its language of public safety, understand agencies’ requirements and how they communicate. Public safety workers generally do not understand our jargon, nor have the time to learn it. Under presidential directive after 9/11, the whole community needed to adopt common language, which ultimately embraced the NIMS/ICS terminology set.

A good example is the Q-signals table, a system of radio shorthand as old as wireless and developed from even older telegraphy codes. Q-signals are a set of abbreviations for common information that save time and allow communication between amateur radio operators. But public safety professionals are almost totally unfamiliar with it. Just the opposite is true with public safety and the use of Ten Codes, with which we as hams are mostly unfamiliar. Examples for police radio: 10-0 Use Caution; 10-1 Weak Signal; 10-2 Good Signal; 10-3 Stop Transmitting; 10-4 Affirmative; etc. Read the police 10-codes. Even worse, they may not even be clear between public safety agencies. This can impede the flow of information between served agencies in a timely process.

Key points about the importance of common radio terminology:

Reduces miscommunication: Using standardized terms minimizes the risk of misunderstandings that could have serious consequences in emergency scenarios.
Improves interoperability: When different agencies or teams use the same radio language, it facilitates collaboration and information sharing across groups.
Efficiency in communication: Standardized phrases and codes allow for faster transmission of information, particularly when time is critical.
Safety enhancement: Clear and consistent communication is essential for ensuring safety in situations like search and rescue operations or industrial work environments.
Examples of common radio terminology:

Roger: Acknowledgment of a message received.
Over and Out: Indicates the end of a transmission and requests a response
Mayday: Emergency distress call
Affirmative: Yes
Negative: No
Go ahead: I am ready for your message
Say again: Repeat all of your last message
Say all before/after: Repeat all before/after a certain phrase or word if you didn’t catch part of the message
Out: Conversation is finished, no answer is required or expected
Radio check: What’s my signal strength? Can you hear me?
Read you loud and clear: Your transmission signal is good; I can hear you fine
Wilco: Abbreviation of “I will comply”, means the speaker will complete the task that’s been asked of them
Break, break: Interruption to a transmission to communicate urgently
Emergency, emergency: Distress call, only to be used when there is an imminent danger to life and immediate assistance is required
Stand by: Wait
Wait out: Waiting period is longer than I expected, I will get back to you as soon as possible
I spell: The next word will be spelled out using the phonetic alphabet
The ITU or NATO phonetic alphabet is internationally recognized and used. If you’ve ever tried to spell a word over a radio, you’ll understand why–it makes things much simpler. Read the ITU phonetic alphabet list.

In conclusion, we need to keep in mind that at the end of the day we work for the served agency. We should think of them as our client and the citizens we serve as our customers. It is also important to remember how we integrate into their operation and not the other way around. [Scott Read, KM6RFB, is a COML, COMT, AUXCOMM cert holder, and SKYWARN operator]

Upcoming Conferences

IWCE 2025 Conference, March 17-20, 2025 (Las Vegas, NV) — Four days of content and networking and two days of exhibits to explore. IWCE is a unique event that brings together professionals working in mission-critical and business-critical communications from across multiple verticals and geographies.

ResCon 2025, March 11-13, 2025 (New Orleans, LA) — This conference is a platform for professionals to delve into the practice of successful resilience and disaster management in our ever-evolving global environment.

2025 National Hurricane Conference, April 14-17, 2024 (New Orleans, LA) — Make sure to attend the Amateur Radio Workship, with presenters from the ARRL and the National Hurricane Center, among other luminaries.

2025 Hazard Mitigation Partners Workshop, April 22-24, 2025 (Rosemont, IL)

5×5: The Public Safety Innovation Summit 2025, June 3-5, 2025 (Bellevue, WA)

APCO 2025, July 27-30, 2025 (Baltimore, MD) — ARRL is an MOU partner with APCO.

Call for QST Articles for the July 2025 Special Issue on EmComm

Every July, QST, the membership journal of ARRL, publishes a special issue with an EmComm focus. This issue is a perfect opportunity for your ARES group to share your experiences doing exercises and drills, as well as participating in responses, so other groups will benefit from your experience. Here’s what QST is looking for:

1,200 to 1,800 words — Tell the story of your participation in an exercise or response with a “how-to” angle. For example, if your club designed an exercise, talk about the rationale that led to the choice of the exercise scenario and parameters.
2-5 high-resolution images – Include captions that explain what’s happening in the photos, the names and call signs of any hams pictured, and the name (and call sign, if applicable) of the person who took each photo.
Send the manuscript and photos to qst@arrl.org by May 1.

K1CE For a Final

My last year’s new year’s resolution was to operate using battery power only for the entire year, which was completed successfully. I employed only a 10-watt HF transceiver (IC-705) on HF using only small LiFePO batteries. I used a larger LiFePO battery for my 80-watt VHF FM rig. One of the lessons I learned was that battery chargers emit RF noise, sometimes up to S4 on my radio’s signal strength meter. I’m planning again on staying on battery power only, but this year I will do all of my operating on portable and mobile platforms, eschewing the traditional “ham shack” model. — Editor

ARES® Resources

Download the ARES Manual [PDF]ARES Field Resources Manual [PDF]ARES Standardized Training Plan Task Book [Fillable PDF]ARES Standardized Training Plan Task Book [Word]ARES Plan
ARES Group Registration
Emergency Communications Training
The Amateur Radio Emergency Service® (ARES) consists of licensed amateurs who have voluntarily registered their qualifications and equipment with their local ARES leadership, for communications duty in the public service when disaster strikes. Every licensed amateur, regardless of membership in ARRL or any other local or national organization is eligible to apply for membership in ARES. Training may be required or desired to participate fully in ARES. Please inquire at the local level for specific information. Because ARES is an amateur radio program, only licensed radio amateurs are eligible for membership. The possession of emergency-powered equipment is desirable, but is not a requirement for membership.

How to Get Involved in ARES: Fill out the ARES Registration form and submit it to your local Emergency Coordinator.

Support ARES®: Join ARRL

ARES® is a program of ARRL The National Association for Amateur Radio®. No other organization works harder than ARRL to promote and protect amateur radio! ARRL members enjoy many benefits and services including digital magazines, e-newsletters, online learning (learn.arrl.org), and technical support. Membership also supports programs for radio clubs, on-air contests, Logbook of The World®, ARRL Field Day, and the all-volunteer ARRL Field Organization.

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