W8EMV - Whiskey Eight Echo Mike Victor

Field report: Washtenaw County siren test, Saturday 2025-05-03

The Washtenaw County Amateur Radio Public Service Corps (ARPSC) supports the county Emergency Operations Center by participating in a monthly test of the 90 outdoor warning sirens in the County. The test is held on the first Saturday of each month from March through October, with the sirens being activated at noon. City of Ann Arbor sirens are on a different schedule, which activates on the second Tuesday at 1:00 p.m.

Ham radio operators like myself who volunteered for the siren test were assigned one of the sirens in the area that's convenient to them and that needs to be monitored for this season. My siren this week was on Lohr Road at Waterways, just southwest of the Ann Arbor Airport. Once you are on location or heading to it there is a brief check-in to make sure everyone can be heard by Net Control. At the noon hour, the sirens go off for their test and there's a net afterwards where people report in successful (or unsuccessful) operation of the siren they are watching. Did it rotate? (Most of them do, but not the ones in Dexter Township). Did it make a noise? Did it stop making noise when the test was done? Are there any maintenance issues, like trees growing into the control box or power line?

Like all parts of the ham radio hobby, this exercise has a few pieces. You need to be able to get to your assigned siren, and they really don't have street addresses - some careful observation and directions from net control should get you there. You'll either need to be near the N8DUY repeater with your handheld radio, or you'll need a suitable car radio with a little more power if you are further away from I-94 and M-14 in Scio Township where the tower is. And of course you'll need to be on time.

Warning sirens save lives, and if they are not working you really want to find out before hand and not during an emergency. Tracking down maintenance issues during these tests is some small but essential part of emergency preparedness, and I'm happy to participate.

Map of siren coverage (checked for January 2025): https://www.washtenaw.org/1785/Washtenaw-County-Outdoor-Warning-Siren-S

Operating notes: 2 meters simplex with the TK-790

Notes from spending about an hour all told tonight doing radio, with the Washtenaw Amateur Radio Public Service Corps (ARPSC) net. We started with the usual net on the 145.15- N8DUY repeater.

After the net there was a simplex net to test simplex sending and receiving. This was my first time doing simplex through this new rig, an ex-railroad Kenwood TK-790 acquired and programmed via Thom W8TAM (45 watts on 2 meters).

Happily the rig was programmed with simplex channels, so I didn't have to do anything more than pick the correct one for the exercise.

Less than ideal: I could see some of the signals on the waterfall for my OpenWebRX+ SDR, but the signal was not strong enough to break squelch unless it was a station that was very close by (Matt WS8U) or that had a very good antenna position (Don AC8TO, Steve KB8AY). I need to figure out how to adjust squelch here to open up the channel and just listen when there's simplex nets.

Much less than ideal, I had a dickens of a time getting the microphone plugged in and recognized. (Maybe a stuck pogo pin?) In any case it eventually all worked well enough that that was not the issue, and I'm not detaching the mic from the rig unless and until I need to.

All in all a very good exercise, and an excuse to get an outdoor antenna for this radio.

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Previously, park operations (through a repeater) with this ex-railroad Kenwood TK-790, a 45 watt 2 meter monoband rig operating bicycle portable.

https://vielmetti.typepad.com/w8emv/2024/01/operating-notes-2-meters-45-watts-bicycle-mobile-with-a-kenwood-tk-790.html

Operating notes: new net protocol for Washtenaw ARPSC net

Our ARPSC (Skywarn) net switched to a new check-in protocol on the Sunday night net. Rather than giving your entire info all in one go, you check in with just a call sign, and then net control calls a roster.

This makes the net more of a directed net, and spends less time on calls that double. It also means that net control has more than one opportunity to correct a missed call sign.

Never one to miss an opportunity to innovate, I'm going to try this approach on a big zoom call, one where it's always uncertain who goes next.

See https://mastodon.radio/@w8emv/104703215788181316 for discussion.

2020 Washtenaw County siren testing season - April 4 station report

As previously, the Washtenaw County Michigan EOC test county warning sirens monthly on the first Saturday of the month during the spring, summer, and fall months. I was home monitoring the net for this session, both via RF on the 145.15- N8DUY repeater (PL 100), as well as via the Broadcastify relay feed.

Of the reports I heard, one siren was in need of maintenance, and I did not copy the location of that siren. In addition, one operator N8ZLR had problems with transmission, able to key the repeater but with no audio; that was fixed by the end of the net.

I joke (ha ha only serious) that one other reason to run nets like these is for it to be the "fix your radio hour". Amateur radio almost always has some opportunity to improve your radio skills, whether that be diagnosing a problem over the air, tuning up an antenna or finding a better design or higher ground to mount it, or locating just the right gear and band and time slot that has other people listening on the other end.

For more info on the siren test, see the Washtenaw siren test web page maintained by the county.

2020 Washtenaw County siren testing season - March field report

The Washtenaw County (Ann Arbor, Michigan and area) siren net started at 11:30 a.m. Saturday 2020-03-07 Eastern time, and was done by about 12:15 p.m. Of the two dozen or so sirens monitored, three were in need of maintenance.

The county emergency operations center runs a net on N8DUY on 145.15 with a negative offset and a 600 Hz PL. This repeater covers the whole area. The emergency warning sirens are tested monthly and used in emergencies like tornado warnings.

I joke that this is the "fix your radio hour", but really there is no better way to be sure that all your equipment is in working order than to be part of a net. I discovered that the stock Radioddity RD-601 antenna on my RD-5R radio didn't work all that well, but when I swapped it out for a Nagoya NA-771 that was already on my other Baofeng UV-5R rigs, it fit perfectly and worked much better.

Bonus: listening to sirens up close! They are rather loud.

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Monitoring notes: Washtenaw siren net, June 2, 2018

Montoring notes, rather than operating notes, as I was just listening to this net.

On the first Saturday of each month, the Washtenaw County sirens are tested at noon, March through October. A net on the N8DUY 145.15 repeater assists in this testing. Radio operators are encouraged to register in advance and to identify a siren to watch. In general you are looking for good sound, good rotation (for sirens that rotate), and any maintenance issues. The net convenes at about 11:30 a.m. and is done by 12:15 p.m. or so.

There are 87 warning sirens in Washtenaw County that are managed by the county. City of Ann Arbor sirens are under city management and are tested on a different schedule.

The N8DUY repeater has very good coverage and is well tested making it ideal for the task of providing coverage to the whole county. This month's net was well-run and verified the correct operation of sirens from Manchester to Northfield Township to Ypsilanti Township.

If you're interested in participating in this testing, contact Ben KC8NIY.

• https://www.washtenaw.org/1785/Washtenaw-County-Outdoor-Warning-Siren-S
• https://sites.google.com/site/miarpsc1/contacts