General Orientation to Amateur Radio Emergency Services
The National Weather Service (NWS), in cooperation with other organizations, has established the SKYWARN® local severe weather spotting network. The program is an effort to save lives and property during severe weather emergencies. Click here to visit the Detroit NWS web site. Review the Basic Spotters' Guide and the Advanced Spotters' Guide in .pdf file format. Here is the protocol for the SKYWARN net which will be activated during times of possible severe weather.
The federal Homeland Security Office has requested that all radio amateur emergency workers participating in RACES have special training. Lenawee County wants all persons in the RACES to have taken the current IS-22 course and the Lenawee County background and security clearances to assist in our county.
The background and clearances are NOT required for most of our emergency operations which are handled by ARES. The checks are required for RACES because that will most likely be enacted by the Federal government during war or terrorism events. Sometimes RACES persons are needed at an emergency operations center and everybody is more comfortable during times of terror with persons who have been checked.
The new preamble for the ARES Sunday night net is located here. It has been changed to standardize it with the ARRL net protocol.
Check these instructions out for programming Kenwood TM-V71A ARES and RACES radios. For the curious, here is the instruction manual.