To the group!Looking forward to hearing from all this Tuesday evening!
DICE 2009: Department of Defense Interoperability Communications Exercise (DICE)
Cochise County RACES will participate in DICE 2009 this week. We will deploy our Mobile Command Unit (http://www.k7rdg.org/Races/MCU.htm) to JITC on Ft. Huachuca later today and participate in DICE 2009 through this coming Thursday. Many emergency communications elements from throughout the state will be participating. It is a pretty interesting exercise and a great opportunity for emergency communications to get together and exchange information and ideas and keep in touch with the EMCOMM "big picture". We will all be setting up in a small area and should have time to visit and meet one another during the exercise. Here is a brief description of the exercise and goals.
Department of Defense Interoperability Communications Exercise (DICE)
DICE is the only DoD exercise whose principal purpose is to generate joint interoperability certifications. Since the Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) is DoD’s sole interoperability certification authority, JITC conducts DICE in support of DoD joint interoperability testing, training, and transformation initiatives with it’s primary focus to mitigate operational risk by thoroughly testing new communications systems and software releases in a realistic joint tactical network. Participants include communications equipment and personnel from each of the Services, Combatant Commands, the Joint Communications Support Element (JCSE), National Guard and the Department of Homeland Security (Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)) and all levels of state, county and local first responders. Also see attachment.
If anyone else will be participating in DICE 2009, please let me know!
Cochise County Search and Rescue: May was a very busy month for Cochise County Search and Rescue (SAR) and our RACES unit. There were 11 SAR missions during the month. Cochise County RACES deployed the Mobile Command Unit 6 or 7 times. The last deployment was last Saturday evening. Not every SAR mission requires RACES support, we usually only deploy on search missions and technical rescues the require a lot of assets. For missions that require only a small team working at a known location, we would not normaly be called out. We are having some notification issues at the present time. Our RACES pager system has been out of service most of the month of May. Our call-out system has been through use of telephone, text messages, and monitoring our RACES repeater. We usually deploy with a three person team, driver/radio operator, co-driver/radio operator, and chase vehicle driver/radio operator. Some incidents were left with only a two person team due to call-out problems. Many of our team members work regular jobs and call outs during normal working hours are sometimes difficult to support.
Changing email address: I will be upgrading my internet access in the next week or so. To get the best deal from Qwest, I am required to change my ISP which means changing email address. I plan to maintain my account with "theriver" for about 1 month after the change. This is a heads up that my email address will be changing soon! More to follow!
Strays! Joye N0OCP has been experiencing computer problems and has not been able to participate in the net for a couple weeks. He has been cleaning up his computer and loading software like crazy the last couple weeks and I am hoping he will be able to make it tomorrow.
We also have missed Greg K7SDW due to schedule conflicts. Hoping to hear from Greg again soon.
Training: This past week I attended a IC-300 class ( ICS-300: Intermediate ICS for Expanding Incidents in Douglas AZ. This is a classroom only NIMS course and is a pre-requisite for certification as a Type 3 incident communications dispacher/operator. Most of the incidents in our county are Type 4 or Type 5. We recently had a wildfire in the county that started as a Type 3 and expanded to a Type 2. The Eastern Arizona Type 2 Incident Management team was deployed to the county for this incident. This is a huge team.
For information about free online courses offered by FEMA go to: http://training.fema.gov/IS/crslist.asp
For information about ARRL Continuing Education Program (including emergency communications) go to: http://www.arrl.org/cep/
For information on upcoming Amateur Radio license exams in your area go to: http://www.arrl.org/arrlvec/examsearch.phtml or check with your local Amateur Radio Club.
Anyone working on any FEMA or ARRL emergency courses? Let us know during our next net!
Solar Cycle 24 Predictions: See attachment
God bless you all!
73 K4AFN Charles
