COTN Recruiting at NWS Spotter Training, March 7, 2015

Post date: Jan 27, 2015 10:54:27 AM

When severe weather threatens lives and property, volunteers from the affected area take action. Trained by the National Weather Service to watch the skies and understand what they're seeing, these volunteer "spotters" typically work together to relay accurate reports of weather activity via amateur radio. This is the National Weather Service SKYWARN® program in action.

Severe weather holds three of the top ten risks identified by FCEM&HS, namely tornadoes (#1), severe winter weather (#7), and severe summer weather (#10). Should such threats to communications infrastructure come to pass, amateur radio again plays a role in response and recovery. COTN may be activated to keep the affected community in touch with the outside world.

The next local NWS weather spotter training will take place on March 7, 2015. This is an excellent opportunity for the Central Ohio Traffic Net to find people who are interested in serving their communities during and after severe weather incidents. Franklin County Emergency Management & Homeland Security has invited COTN to staff a recruiting booth at the training event. COTN will be there, led by Matthew Curtin KD8TTE.

We are looking for COTN volunteers to staff the booth. Volunteers should be active traffic handlers, preferably ARRL Official Relay Stations (ORS), and sufficiently experienced with both traffic handling and the Central Ohio Traffic Net to answer questions that arise. We also expect to originate some traffic from the site and able to demonstrate traffic relay and delivery.

To volunteer for a slot (or two) at the booth, please send a radiogram to KD8TTE with the text

SPOTTER VOLUNTEER ____

where ___ is the time beginning the slot or slots that you would like to staff. We anticipate the heaviest periods to be during onsite registration (0800-0900) and immediately after the session (1300), where the schedule provides double coverage.

Spotter training will be held at the OSU Fawcett Center located at 2400 Olentangy River Road. Please note that you'll need a parking pass on your dashboard; please advise KD8TTE if you are in need of the pass.