Information for the S.E.T. Saturday 9AM-12PM - this Saturday 30th October

[Mike VA3MCT]

Let me first say that all are welcome to join in and attempt message passing for the Saturday 30th October Simulated Emergency Test (S.E.T.).

IMPORTANT:

1) Please do not attempt to visit any of the locations mentioned unless you have been specifically asked by me to attend in previous discussions. This is primarily a virtual event due to COVID-19.

2) Remember to state in your communications that this is a S.E.T. and all messages are to be preempted by TEST TEST TEST.

REAL EMERGENCIES:

Emergencies and Disasters know no time line and therefore, they can happen at any time. The pro-word “NO DUFF” will be used for such reasons. This pro-word will be used prior to and following any message that is a real time Emergency. 

Purpose:

To test simplex voice message passing from one end of York Region to the other.

To trial Winlink message passing using Peer 2 Peer Packet. (Packet P2P)

Scenario:

The scenario is based on the GTA ARES S.E.T. as follows:

"Southern, Central and Eastern Ontario has experienced a ”High Impact, Low Frequency” scenario of disastrous proportions, where local infrastructure will be lost. This loss of communications will be of such a magnitude, that Municipalities and the Province will require critical updates and coordination across the GTA from both its own resources and that of ACS.
These critical updates would then be passed to other agencies through PEOC. i.e. MTO, EMS, OPP and any other relevant agency for their information and action. For the purpose of this exercise these calls will be kept in house and not forwarded." 

Frequency Assignments for the GTA:

Voice Main – locally assigned
Voice HF-Primary: Alpha 3.750MHz - Secondary PEOC 7.100 (7. 135 is very busy) –
Local FM Repeaters -  If and where operational.  
Data Main- Any available Gateways. Telnet if station is not radio capable.
GTA Liaison Net -147.405MHz (simplex)

Frequency Assignments for York Region:

Voice Main – 146.550MHz or Ch#24 if you have the YRARC frequency lists
Voice HF-Primary: None
Local FM Repeaters - None (see explanation below)
Data Main- Winlink preferred using Packet P2P protocols
GTA Liaison Net -147.405MHz (simplex)

Net Control in York Region:

This year, York Region will focus on Simplex communications and from the research compiled from last weeks Simplex Saturday tests, York Region will run with three net controllers, North (covering Bradford, Keswick, and towns on the South shore of Lake Simcoe), Central (covering Newmarket and Aurora) and South (covering Markham, Richmond Hill and Vaughan).

They will announce themselves at the appropriate time on the Main Voice channel as defined above. 

Net Controllers will make announcements, take check-ins and check-outs and manage frerquencies for others to talk on. For example, if operator A wishes to speak to operator B for passing messages, the net controller may ask them to move to Channel #25. Once they complete message passing they will come back to Channel#24 and check-in with the net controller again.

Messages:

There will be several messages that need to be sent from South to North and vice-versa and will be critical for us to set up our own infrastructure.

Other than that, you are welcome to define your own brief messages to be announced or sent to an individual, which may be direct or require the message to be passed through several operators to reach a destination. All of this must be managed through the net controllers, but again net controllers themselves will not pass messages.

Critical Infrastructure:

Roles to listen out for will be:

VA3MEO, this is the callsign in use by the Markham Emergency Operations

VA3YEM, this is the callsign used by York Emergency Management. 

Both of these callsigns do have a real home within their respective EOC, but the real EOC's will not be active during this S.E.T.

The communications trailer will also be activated during the S.E.T. and if planning works they will set up the communications trailer repeater, the frequency of which will be announced during the S.E.T. by the net controllers at the respective time.

Please attempt to make contact either via simplex voice or through the comms trailer repeater (once operational) with any of these above callsigns.

Timing:

Around 9AM

There will be a request from Markham Emergency Operations to activate York Region ARES.

The South, Central and North nets will begin operating using the Main Voice channel as defined above.

There will be a request made to activate the Markham Emergency Operations station (VA3MEO).

An operator will "virtually" set up VA3MEO and after check-ins with the South net controller will then make a request for the communications trailer to be activated. This message will need to get from MEO to our trailer technicians based in the North of the region (hence message passing thru Central and North will be required).

Around 10AM 

The trailer should be active on 2M Simplex at a minimum but will start preparing the repeater. Whoever is the operator at the trailer will check in with the local net controllers that can hear them.

Around 11AM

Once the trailer is fully active using the repeater, the trailer operator will send out a follow-up message on Simplex announcing the availability of the repeater including frequency and CTCSS code. This message will again need to be relayed out by the net controllers to their respective check-ins.

Around 12PM

Close down each net.

Trailer Operations concludes.

Request to all operators:

Please make an attempt to communicate via the trailer repeater which will be located just East of Newmarket.

Other than that message passing is free form but should remain under the control of a net controller.

Occasionally, The EC for York Region or the SEC will input messages that need to be passed. Likewise We may hear further requests from VA3MEO or VA3YEM.

Feel free to also interoperate with the GTA ARES team based on the above defined HF frequencies or the GTA Liaison net.

Please check-in with the GTA Liasion Net. 

After Action Report.

It would be highly useful if you could report on what worked and what did not work so that we can change the operations for next time to make improvements.

Did you attempt to use the communications trailer repeater but were unable to contact anyone through it.

Did you attempt to check-in to the GTA Liaison net but were unable.

There was interference caused by:

Intentional interference,

background RF Noise

Too many of our own operators on the same channel.

All of this kind of information is useful to build a better ARES/ACS group.

Most of all, from all of this, is to have fun and learn from the experience.

73,

Mike Crabtree - VA3MCT - Emergency Coordinator York Region ARES

[Mike VA3MCT]

A BIG thank you to all who got involved on this rainy York region day, whether activating the trailer, taking on a role as net control, or just generally participating in message passing.

There are certainly LOTS of things we learned today about what works and probably more about what does NOT work.

Having three net controllers across York region had its advantages, but then brought in different issues around procedures and the use of a single simplex frequency.

We discovered issues with the trailer repeater which need to be fixed and winlink over RF seemed to be a bust.

As usual communications with Toronto seemed to cause a big issue for all involved and a lack of some documentation on how to contact the Provincial EOC also caused a breakdown.

Please provide your constructive feedback to emc...@yrarc.org and we will build an improvement plan.

One idea I did hear is to do this more often, maybe even monthly, but with known improvements planned each time.

Again, thank you for your time and effort today.

73,

Mike Crabtree - VA3MCT