An unusually extreme winter storm delivering heavy snow, ice, and cold temperatures is expected to impact a 2000 mile swath from New Mexico through New England over the weekend of January 23rd through the 27th.

***AmRRON special instructions below***

EXPECT POWER OUTAGES AND IMPASSABLE ROADS

From Accuweather:

Accumulating snow will fall along a swath of the central and eastern United States that extends for at least 2,000 miles and includes the major cities of Albuquerque, New Mexico; Denver; Oklahoma City; St. Louis; Nashville; Indianapolis; Cincinnati; Pittsburgh; Washington, D.C.; Baltimore; Philadelphia; New York City and Boston.

Snow will begin over eastern portions of Colorado and New Mexico as well as western portions of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas on Friday and then expand eastward across the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys on Saturday. On Saturday night, the snow is forecast to reach the mid-Atlantic and the central Appalachians before spreading over much of New England on Sunday.

AmRRON OPERATIONS

Effective Friday through Tuesday (January 23rd – 27th)

Objective:  Maintain a continuous presence as a lifeline to those inside the impacted areas who may not have conventional communications for reporting conditions, emergencies, or requests for assistance.

AmRRON Wide:  Persistent Presence Net.  All stations are encouraged to be operational.  If you normally operate the PPN, increase frequent monitoring of your station.  If you do not normally operate during PPN scheduled times, please have your station operational and check for traffic frequently.  All stations should operate in FLDIGI and JS8Call at a minimum — preferably also in FLMSG/FLAMP and COMMSTAT.

Inside the impacted areas:  Submit a new STATREP to the network via HF once per day, or when conditions change,  reflected in your [new] STATREP.  Forward your STATREP using the ‘STATREP ACK’ feature in Commstat no more than once every four hours, and whenever you change bands.

Do not create a brand new STATREP within a 24-hour period if nothing in your status has changed.

Outside the impacted areas:  Minimize congestion on the band.  Manually send a Heartbeat only once your station is on the air, or when you change bands.  There is no need to beacon or submit STATREPs if you are not impacted by real-world events.  Your auto reply is adequate to make your station’s presence known.

TURN AUTO REPLY OFF in JS8Call during scheduled training net times.  Only transmit in the event of a real-world emergency during scheduled training net time periods, and one half hour prior to the start of the net.  Check the net schedule on the website.

If you receive a STATREP from a station in the impacted area, please acknowledge (ACK) the originating station, and then forward to the AmRRON network (Preferably using Commstat.

If you receive real-world emergency traffic, collect as much information as you can:

  • Name, address, and phone number of reporting party, and a log of the time and date of all correspondence and related incidents
  • Location/address of the emergency
  • Nature of the emergency with as much detail as possible (sex, age, injury or description of emergency, any hazards or dangerous conditions which responding services need to know about before approaching the location)

THEN CALL 911  (they will be able to relay your message or transfer you to a more appropriate agency)

THEN produce a report and email to johnjacob at AmRRON dot com; and/or submit the report using an AmRRON custom Blank form over the air, directing it to SIGCEN Eastern and SIGCEN National.  There will be stations on the air who can take your traffic and deliver it if you do not get a direct response from one of the SIGCENs.  The report should include all the details of the emergency, your actions, and all parties involved and with whom you interacted (EXCEPTION:  Any over-the-air reports sent to SIGCENs or AmRRON Network should omit personally-identifying information of parties involved — addresses, phone numbers, names, etc.)

Below is the White Paper, including frequencies, times, and guidance for Persistent Presence Net operations.

Stay safe!  Thank you all for your willingness to serve.

White Paper – AmRRON PERSISTENT PRESENCE NET

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