Centre County ARES will participate with the State College office of the National Weather Service (NWS CTP) in Skywarn Recognition Day this Saturday, December 1, 2018 from 9:00 AM Local to 11:00 AM Local. Here are the operating instructions from the ARRL website with local instructions in bold:
SKYWARN Recognition Day Operating Instructions
1. Object For all amateur stations to exchange QSO information with as many National Weather Service Stations as possible on 80, 40, 20, 15, 10, 6, and 2 meter bands plus the 70 centimeter band. Contacts via repeaters are permitted. SKYWARN™ Recognition Day serves to celebrate the contributions to public safety made by amateur radio operators during threatening weather.
NWS CTP will only operate on 2 meter FM
2. Date NWS stations will operate December 1, 2018, from 0000 – 2400 UTC.
As above we’re only staffing NWS CTP from 09:00 to 11:00.
3. Exchange: Call sign, signal report, QTH, and a one or two-word description of the weather occurring at your site (“sunny”, “partly cloudy”, “windy”, etc.).
Operators at NWS CTP will log this information for submission by NWS personnel.
4. Modes: NWS stations will work various modes including SSB, FM, AM, RTTY, CW, FT8 and PSK31. While working digital modes, special event stations will append “NWS” to their call sign (e.g., N0A/NWS).
Again, only 2 meter FM at NWS CTP. However, anyone with HF capability is encouraged to try to make contacts on HF Bands from their personal stations.
5.Station Control Operator: It is suggested that during SRD operations a non-NWS volunteer should serve as a control operator for your station.
Greg, K3HOT and Rick, K3ROG will operate the NWS CTP station for the event. The primary net operations will be conducted on the 146.850 -, 146.2, W3YA repeater.
6. Event and QSL Information: The National Weather Service will provide event information via the internet. Event certificates will once again be electronic and printable from the main website after the conclusion of SRD.
7. Log Submission: To submit your log summary for SRD use the online submission form.
The form can be found at http://bit.ly/2AbrbRQ. Individual stations may submit their own logs.
Deadline for log submission is January 31, 2019.
Earlier today Greg and I programmed new repeater pairs into the NWS radio. Most, if not all of the 33 county NWS CTP area can be covered by various machines. The operators will try to make contacts throughout the area.
Centre County stations can report by calling the NWS station, WX3CTP, on the 146.85 repeater.
A list of the possible repeaters for contact can be found here:
