Lee County ARES February 19, 2023 Monthly Meeting

Lee County ARES discussed the first deployment of the EmComm Trailer at Winter Field Day for the extended duration of the event, January 26-29 at Wilson Fox Park. Overall the trailer performance was excellent and beyond expectation. AREDN worked well, radios worked well. Issues were encountered with the generator’s inverter causing RF noise. Although being able to diminish it and work, more testing need to be done in the next few months. Of the antenna we brought out, the Chameleon worked the best for HF, the end-fed and the screw driver one the worse. Proper grounding might have been a problem for both generator and antennas and we will experiment farther. We are also modifying the Chameleon antenna to make it NVIS and we will look for other NVIS antennas to communicate to stations closer to our position. It was decided to add another digital radio to the trailer, to buy more coax, and to change the position of the ICOM 7300 and get it closer to the others. The push-up pole worked great, but it was cumbersome to take it down when lightning started. But we know that will be the first upgrade in the future. A full AAR is in the making and it will be sent to ARDC, our generous patron who made it possible for us to have the trailer, and Lee County Authorities. AREDN worked great. Members are going to buy personal equipment and install AREDN antennas on the two repeater towers. We briefly discussed the progress with the EOC as we are getting closer to install the equipment. We are working closely with our Lee County EMC on this project. Icy temperature Exercise conducted January 30 to February 2 was also discussed and the AAR presented. Great improvement was noted since the December Arctic Storm Exercise, and again it was noted that it would be beneficial to have a Winlink form for Lee County, also to be discussed first with our EMC.