W8EMV - Whiskey Eight Echo Mike Victor

Skywarn Recognition Day on Saturday, 3 December 2022 0000z-2400z

The National Weather Service has announced that Skywarn Recognition Day 2022 is Saturday, 3 December 2022. Trained Skywarn spotters are encouraged to register on the event web site and check in for their location, get assigned an SRD for contact exchanges, and upload their contact logs to the NWS after the day. The hashtag of the day is #skywarn2022 but I have also seen #skywarn22 and just #skywarn .

ARRL has SKYWARN Recognition Day Operating Instructions. Participating stations are asked to exchange QSO information with National Weather Service stations from 0000z-2400z (700p Friday night to 700p Saturday night, US Eastern time). The exchange is Call sign, signal report, QTH, and a one or two word description of the weather occurring at your site ("sunny", "partly cloudy", "windy", etc.). (e.g. W8EMV 59 Ann Arbor windy). If you register with the NWS ahead of time you can get an SRD number - mine is SRD-DTX-1226. NWS stations will work various modes including SSB, FM, AM, RTTY, CW, and PSK31. Contacts via repeaters are permitted.

Locally here in Ann Arbor, the Skywarn repeater for Washtenaw County is the N8DUY repeater on 145.15- PL100.

The current Hazardous Weather Outlook for the Detroit/Pontiac DTX region is a wind advisory tonight through Saturday morning for wind gusts of 40 to 50 mph.

On the net, two Mastodon servers of interest are mastodon.radio and wx.social. The first is of special interest to ham radio operators, and the second is a new system for weather and weather adjacent (climatology, geography) enthusiasts, professionals, and students from the good folks at StormDig.

I plan to be tuned to N8DUY locally, and hope to pick up some DMR contacts along the way. I'll be checking the Fedihams network as well.

The map of the Maine Skywarn network for station WX1GYX Gray, ME lists TG 759 (SKY) on the DMR-MARC network for "SKYWARN for ME & NH". The Brandmeister DMR network lists TG 31206 as the "Central Kansas Skywarn" channel; please note these are not rag chewing talk groups .

Skywarn report: Ann Arbor Father's Day storms, 2021

On Sunday, June 20, 2021 from 8:15 pm - 11:05 pm the Washtenaw County Skywarn net was activated for a series of severe thunderstorm warnings. The net stayed in "condition green" the entire time, with WD8EOC relaying National Weather Service reports, but with no significant reports of damage in the county.

The worst of the weather passed to the south of the Ann Arbor area, with Lenawee and Monroe County seeing storm damage.

The National Weather Service summary, Severe Thunderstorms and Riga Tornado June 20, 2021, notes 50-60 mph wind, 60,000 power outages, and an EF-1 tornado in Riga in Lenawee County that had a 3 mile long track. Riga is about 45 minutes south of Ann Arbor, on US-223 west of US-23.

The area was under a severe thunderstorm watch overnight, but the most severe of the storms in that system did not make it this far east. The worst impact of the second round of storm activity was in suburban Chicago, where the EF-3 tornado from Naperville to Willow Springs blew through a 16 mile track of up to 1/3 of a mile wide that injured 11 but (miraculously) had no fatalities.

Skywarn nets in the Ann Arbor area are coordinated through the N8DUY repeater on 145.15- MHz in the 2 meter band. A slightly delayed transmission of the repeater is available on Broadcastify.

Skywarn net report, 2020-04-07 evening

Skywarn activated on the N8DUY repeater for a thunderstorm with some hail reports. At 2134 the net control was getting frequent reports of pea-sized hail, so much so that they asked reporters to focus on nickel-sized hail or better. The net stayed condition green the entire time, until the storms passed out of Washtenaw County at about 2200. I checked out at 2213, and the net closed at 2221.

The most notable reports were as follows:

At 2123, a report of a minute of 3/4 inch hail at Textile Rd and Whittaker Rd, Ypsilanti Twp.

At 2019, Jeff KN8A reports nickel size hail at Stofer + Island Lk Road, Dexter Twp. Road covered with hail.

Video: M-52, 2 miles north of I-94 via Tom Gunnells via Twitter.

Steve W8AYN was net control. Summary: lots of checkins (34), lots of pea sized hail reports. Net closed at 2221. Weather was "enhanced risk". WD8EOC station monitored from the county and related reports to and from NWS.

A fox hunt for location of QRM was called for after the net completed.

At its peak I saw 45 stations listening to the Broadcastify relay of the N8DUY repeater that carries Washtenaw Skywarn nets.

Washtenaw County EOC will cancel its scheduled Skywarn test net, since this actual net was sufficient to test handling of lots of traffic.

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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Operating notes: AABTS "One Helluva Ride" 2018-W28-6 (July 14, 2018)

I rode and drove SAG for the AABTS "One Helluva Ride" on Saturday, July 14, 2018 with Saul KE8DDR. We clocked 111 miles door to door, which included two stops at the Gregory rest stop and a scenic ride through Hell, MI on a road that was paved with good intentions.

My 5 watt Baofeng HT was useful for talk-in to reach George K9TRV and Dan KB6NU who were operating net control. I had earlier programmed in the WD8IEL Chelsea repeater into it using Chirp, so I was ready to go. The range of my HT inside the car was not very good, but it was good enough for its purposes getting started. The Chelsea repeater is located near the M-52 and I-94 interchange.

The ARROW club has some radios just for this purpose, so we installed them temporarily in my car. Last year I made a goal of getting a W8EMV plate on the car just for this reason, and I managed to successfully navigate the Michigan Secretary of State system for doing that (at a cost of $7 for the vanity plate - cheap).

The antenna we used was a 5/8 wave with a mag mount on the roof of the car and the antenna cable snaked through a crack in the window, from ARROW.

The radio we used was a 2m rig, a FT-2900R, from ARROW. The only thing I noticed was that the tuning knob was very easy to turn and I bumped it at least once knocking me off-frequency.

The SAG drivers didn't all use APRS this time as far as I could tell. I also didn't have enough space to set up a laptop + wifi + cell phone hotspot in the car. Perhaps next year that can be a goal.

Neither WD8IEL nor N8DUY are on Echolink, so there wasn't really any backup plan to use wifi to get access to the net. That said, N8DUY which was pressed into service mid-ride has excellent coverage of the whole county and beyond. I was able to hear N8DUY on the HT all the way to Gregory. Of course net control had a cell phone number so the backup plan was the phone network.

Saul KE8DDR and I joke that the Sunday night nets are the "fix your radio hour". It turned out that running a net for a ride gives you a chance to do the "fix your radio hour", "fix your bicycle hour", and "fix your repeater hour" all at once. He repaired two blown tubes, and helpfully ran shifts both driving and operating the radio.

Elsewhere on the net:

• Dan KB6NU writeup: ARROW provides public service communications
• Steve W8SFC writeup on ARROW list (login required)

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

Operating notes: Nagoya NA-771 antenna, Washtenaw Skywarn

The stock antenna on my Baofeng UV-5R stopped working just before a vacation trip up north. This got in the way of operating in the Upper Peninsula, which I had been looking forward to. Oh well, several the repeaters up there have Echolink, so any time I want to tune in I can, as long as I have wifi or cell data coverage. I didn't go on the air while I was there, though I did monitor one conversation (about snowmobiling).

I've replaced the Baofeng's antenna with a Nagoya NA-771. It's quite a bit longer than the original equipment, so much so that it just barely fits in my bookbag. It still does fit, though, and that means I can still carry a radio around with me anywhere. I haven't done exhaustive trials of performance but it's clearly better that I had been getting before, and overall I'm happy with the switch to a new antenna.

It was a busy night tonight on the N8DUY 145.15 repeater as storms blew through the area causing widespread power outages and lots of talk on the Skywarn net. Even though there was a lot of static, I still was able to hear the talk on the air and relay reports from trained spotters to Twitter. (I'm not a trained spotter yet - yet! - so I didn't check in to the net.)

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