Vol 8, No 7
July 2010

In this issue:

• National Preparedness Month-September

• Pictures Wanted

• How About Audio?

• Hurricane Season

• Good News!

• Speaking Opportunity for PIOs

• Talk with the Hand

• The Last Word Field Day is over – now what?

National Preparedness Month coming up

September is National Preparedness Month (NPM). NPM is sponsored by FEMA’s Ready Campaign in partnership with Citizen Corps and the Advertising Council and is designed to encourage Americans to take simple steps to prepare for emergencies in their homes, businesses, and communities.

September 2010 marks the seventh annual NPM. This year will focus on encouraging Americans to work together to take concrete actions toward emergency preparedness. We are encouraging all Americans to join the readiness team and truly help themselves, their neighbors, and their communities be Ready.

Please consider joining the NPM Coalition! Coalition membership is open to all public and private sector organizations for free. By joining the Coalition your organization would agree to promote emergency preparedness during the month of September. Once you register you will receive access to the NPM Web site where you can find a toolkit that includes templates, resources and tips to assist you with promoting emergency preparedness. You will also find an NPM calendar where you can post your events and see what other organizations are doing in your community. In addition, can share your success stories and read about the successes of others.

More than 500 organizations have signed up so far. You can register to become an NPM Coalition Member by visiting http://ready.adcouncil.org. To learn more about NPM, visit www.ready.gov and click on the NPM banner. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact the Ready Campaign at NPM@dhs.gov.

Pictures Wanted

Action pictures are like gold to us here at HQ. Good shots of Amateur Radio action with something going on in the background are rare. If you have good pictures that you can share, we want them!

For publication uses, they should be at least over ½ Meg in size -the higher the resolution the better for us. We also need to have the OK from the person who took the picture, names (and calls) of who is in it and a brief statement of what is happening.

How About Audio?

The summer storm season is here and there’s a lot of Skywarn action happening. While no one wants an emergency, we know they will happen. How about recording some audio?

During Katrina there were recordings made of some of the emergency nets that have been excellent for explaining what hams do in crises. But they are getting old now. Recording an emergency net and then editing it down to the “exciting parts” to use in explaining our activities to the public makes for good PR material to present to the public, other organizations and the media.

Keeping one of the new digital recorders handy as you monitor is not hard to do. (Some rigs have this capability built right into them.) If you capture something good, send us a copy as an mp3 file!

Hurricane Season Message: From Julio, WD4R

Hello Fellow Ham Radio Operators,
In cooperation with the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida, and WX4NHC, we are asking for your assistance in the 2010 Hurricane Season.
The most important role amateur radio plays in hurricanes is to gather and relay information to the National Hurricane Center through WX4NHC.
While there are mechanisms to do this, we are always looking for more assistance in this vital job. You could be the only station in the impacted area and your Eye Witness Reports or measured data, if you have a weather station, could be critical to the forecasters. You could be the only station hearing some other ham calling with a report or needing assistance in a dangerous situation they are in. Also, you could play the important role in translating a Ham's report into a language that we understand. So as you can see, everyone has a part they can play.
WX4NHC on 14.325 MHz is a frequency that you should always monitor during a hurricane. More information can be found at www.wx4nhc.org . This frequency is maintained for hurricanes by the Hurricane Watch Net www.hwn.org

The VoIP Hurricane Net utilizes Echolink and IRLP to link stations together over the internet. When HF propagation is not good, sometimes this is the only way information reaches WX4NHC.
EchoLink Conference Room is WX-Talk (Node 7203) and IRLP Node is 9219. More information can be found at www.voipwx.net

We ask you for your support and assistance anytime the Hurricane Watch Net, VoIP Hurricane Net, and WX4NHC are active. The part you play may save someone's life!

Good News!

Maria Somma, AB1FM, ARRL/VEC Manager noted to us that the number of new Amateurs as of June 18^th surpassed the 2005 total for the entire year.

This is a shorter CONTACT! than usual because so much energy went into Field Day. But have you seen the results? http://www.arrl.org/media-hits There were so many FD related hits that I had to delete many not-so-old listings and still add a whole new page just to have brief links to the media I spotted about Amateur Radio.

But wait – there’s more!

Not only were there more media hits than ever, but the quality of the articles and stories was substantially improved. There were very few of the simple "community calendar" listings this year as they were replaced by whole articles about Amateur Radio. We also had many more television and broadcast radio hits than before and a wonderful lack of the tiresome "old time, dying radio" comments. While not quite as many as last year, we also had 25 state or governor's level Field Day proclamations plus a host of city and county proclamations. In short – “Ya dun gud!”

So what’s coming up?

In early August, I will be sending packages of special postcards to every PIC in the country. If there is no PIC, then I will be sending them to the SM. I am asking them to share the cards among their PIOs during August. PIOs can fill them out and mail them to local media in September. They are BIRTHDAY CARDS! They announce the 75^th birthday of ARES and invite the media to contact you for a great story about local people who volunteer their technical skills and equipment to keep their neighbors safe.

(See last month’s CONTACT! for the 75^th logo)

If things go as expected, there also will be a 1^st class new video PSA for broadcast uses.

Stay tuned!