Overview
A "hotwash" (after-action review) of the country drill which was held on January 19, 2013 was conducted during the training net on Tuesday, January 22, 2013. Michael Fox, N6MEF, was host / net control. Following is a summary of the discussion during the net.
Drill Goals / Scenario
The overall goals of the drill and the specifics of the drill scenario were reviewed. For an outline of this information, consult the County Drill - 19-Jan-2013 page.
Comments / Feedback
Comments and feedback were solicited from the participating cities and from individuals. Overall feedback was positive and there were several requests to repeat this type of drill to verify that improvements have been made. Following is a summary of the specific comments received.
Palo Alto (Patrick Barrett, AF6OT)
- Voice
- Discovered 70cm antenna problem
- Packet
- Discovered 1.25m antenna problem
- Had some problems with packet message addressing; investigating.
Milpitas (Tim Howard, KE6TIM)
- Voice
- Tested local ability to deal with problems by disabling their local city repeater without warning. Discovered need for additional training.
- No difficulty communicating with county EOC
- Packet
- No problems with packet
- Noticed that delivery receipts took an average of 20-25 minutes to receive. Usually, the time is much shorter
- Michael Fox, N6MEF, explained that the county normally uses a LAN connection to the primary BBS and auto-polls the BBS every 5 minutes. Because the county was also operating on its secondary BBS, they used radio and did not connect to the BBS as often.
Morgan Hill (Woody Salyer, K6WWS)
- Voice
- Message net worked o.k.
- Command net repeater continues to exhibit low audio levels and noise
- Packet
- Almost none of their messages got through on packet
- Outpost crashed with "blue screen of death"
- Successfully reinstalled Outpost, but original messages were lost so unable to troubleshoot original reason they did not make it to the county.
Mountain View (Jerry Haag, K6GAC)
- Voice
- Used the opportunity to deploy resources throughout the city
- No problems communicating within the city or with the county EOC
- Packet
- Addressing of messages to alternate BBSs is something that will require more training and drill repetition to master
- Missed the fact that the county EOC had also shifted to its secondary BBS.
- Recommend announcing via voice nets whenever packet frequencies are shifted.
San Jose (Chris Swartout, N6WCP)
- Voice
- Originally missed the announcement of the voice simplex frequency to be used for the message net.
- Discovered the frequency during the drill. After that, no problem communicating with the county.
- Packet
- Primary set-up was being upgraded and didn't work
- Secondary set-up used a channelized radio, but the packet frequencies had not been programmed
- Resorted to equipment from individual operators
Sunnyvale (Andreas Ott, K6OTT)
- Voice
- Practiced pre-staging per their city plan at the beginning of the drill. As a result, did not get to monitor the county frequencies at the beginning of the drill.
- Once resources were deployed, no difficult communicating with the county. The usual simplex issue of not being able to hear everyone on the net was present.
- Packet
- W1XSC 2m frequency (144.990) was unusable due to interference from MotoTRBO repeater
- Also recommended announcing via voice nets whenever packet frequencies are shifted
Others
- Frank Weiss, K6FCW
- Was net control for Message Net in county radio room and congratulated everyone for a fine job of using 5-word increments when sending messages
- Dave Platt, AE6EO
- Was deployed to a fire station in Mountain View. Found the W1XSC 2m frequency (144.990) totally unusable due to interference. Used an alternate BBS to get through.
- Recommended designating a tertiary BBS or a procedure to use if both primary and secondary BBSs are unavailable.
Other Packet Feedback
- The discussion group is used to provide technical support to Santa Clara County packet network users and to suggest and discuss enhancements to the packet network and the software used to access it.
- As of this hotwash, current hot topics on the discussion group are message numbering and methods for simplifying message addressing.
This page was last updated on 22-Jul-2022