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Antennas & Equip The Coastal Point newspaper published the following article on
AR-Cluster September 4, 2009 on page A58. 
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Ham radio operators keeping lines of communication open
       
 

   As wildfires raged on the West Coast this week, people on the East Coast - specifically, the Bethany Beach area - were counting their blessings that, as the 2009 hurricane season reaches its peak, once again the area has been spared.
   It's been discussed before.  What will hap-pen when the next "big storm" comes through the beach town?  Will everyone be able to get out?  How will people communicate?  What if there is no electricity and no cell phones, and landlines are down and all the computers are floating down Route 1?
   Well, Bethany Beach residents and visitors alike can rest easy that, in the case of such an emergency, officials will still be able to communicate with the outside world, as they will be ham-radio equipped.  The town has recently put up an antenna and will be installing the
radio equipment in the next week.
   Licensed Amateur Radio Operators,
known as "hams", are generally anything but.  These trained, organized volunteers have taken extensive tests for their licensing requirement by the FCC and will now be on hand to man the communication equipment in the event of a coastal emergency.
   Sussex County Amateur Radio Disaster Services, or ARES, headed by Bill Duveneck of Bethany Beach, is currently working with Atlantic General Hospital in Berlin, Nanticoke Hospital in Seaford and Beebe Medical Center in Lewes to set up emergency communications.  And Bethany Beach Town Hall now joins Sussex County Operations in Georgetown and the Delaware Emergency Management office in Smyrna in having the equipment necessary to keep communication lines open should an emergency arise.
   "What that means for the town is, in the event of any situation that makes normal communication equipment inoperable, we have a good solid back-up system that doesn't rely on telephone, that runs on emergency power, and we can talk around town, around Sussex County and around the U.S. if need be," explained Duveneck.
   The Sussex County ARES, made up of more than 65 members, has divided the county into four quadrants, Bethany Beach being in the southeastern quadrant.  In the event of an emergency, such as a storm, if called by the town manager or the mayor, they have a telephonic emergency tree that sets up the volunteers to man the radios.
   According to the Amateur Radio Relay League, or ARRL, amateur operators have both informal and formal groups to coordinate

communication during emergencies." At the local level, hams may participate in local emergency organizations, or organize local 'traffic nets'.   At the state level, hams are often involved with state emergency management operations.  In addition, hams operate at the national level through the Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES), which is coordinated through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and through the Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES), which is coordinated through the American Radio League and its field volunteers."
   ARES is used by the Red Cross in a disaster, as well as the Salvation Army, OEM, FEMA, and hundreds of county and municipal governments.
   Bethany Beach Mayor Tony McClenny, who is himself a ham, attended a DEMA meeting in Smyrna in December of 2007 along with a few other full-time residents, and the town put in a request for a grant for the equipment so the town could establish an emergency communications plan in the event that all other communications quit working.
   All hams must be licensed by the FCC, and McClenny explained that members of the ARRL have three main missions they abide by:  to maintain international goodwill, experiment and invent new ways to communicate, and for emergency operations.
   While McClenny, who is a member of the ARRL, is a ham enthusiast for fun, has spoken with people in every county in the world, and has even broadcast from 11 different countries, the equipment at town hall will be used only for emergency communications.

 

 

 

    "On 9/11, all the cell phones were busy and the dial-ups were busy, and groups of amateur radio operators went to the Pentagon to set up stations and provided communications during that time," he explained, noting the necessity of the equipment in a time of mass confusion and chaos, such as Sept. 11, 2001.
   "Hams" talk via a variety of methods, ranging from voice to Morse code to digital transmissions.  The systems are operated by people all over the world, in every country, on every continent, and allow for users to talk with each other, whether 10 feet away or 10,000 miles.
   McClenny said this type of communication is necessary because, when all else fails - cell phones, Internet and landlines - ham operators can be counted upon.
   "We might go down as well, but we can throw a line up in a tree and make it work," he said.
   To commemorate National Preparedness Month, Sussex County ARES will be hosting an amateur radio demo at the Marvel Carriage Museum in Georgetown on South Bedford Street from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 19.  DEMA has been invited, as well as the Georgetown fire department, and the public is being invited to see how the ham radio equipment - identical to the equipment now available to the Town of Bethany Beach - operates.  They can learn what communication systems are in place should a storm event happen on the Delmarva Peninsula.









 
 

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