Simulated Emergency Test Continues; Excellent Activity So Far

Post date: Oct 4, 2015 11:01:47 AM

The Central Ohio Traffic Net (COTN) continues its participation in the annual ARRL Simulated Emergency Test (SET). We held eleven net sessions on Saturday, October 3. We have held two sessions so far today (0000 and 0600), with another seven to go before the conclusion of our SET activity at the end of the 1915 session this evening.

A few fun facts so far:

• We have passed about 70 pieces of traffic;
• We have sent and received traffic locally, throughout the Section, as well as the U.S., to as far as California;
• Our friends abroad are also helping, with participating stations from Great Britain and Ireland;
• We've moved traffic in and out of COTN via the CW, NTSD, and phone nets;
• We operated two sessions from the Franklin County Emergency Management Agency;
• We've exchanged digital traffic locally; and
• We've passed traffic during simplex operation.

Stations checked in so far -- with apologies to anyone who checked in but that hasn't made it to my quick list here; you'll make it to the final stats! -- include KD8EEK, KD8KBX, KD8SYP, KD8TQI, KD8TTE, KD8TVB, KD8YCW, KE8BUU, KE8BZW, N8BHL, N8RRB, N8YRF, N9AUG, W8SGT, and WA3EZN.

We're working the same scenario as ARES for the Ohio Section -- power grid outage -- and have been able to focus on getting welfare traffic moved on behalf of the public at large while ARES focuses on support of public service agencies. At this point in the scenario, power has returned and the agencies are working on their own primary communication channels. NTS remains active today, continuing to move traffic as Internet and phone service continue to suffer degraded service and availability.

Please see our SET 2015 page for the latest. Looking forward to hearing you on the air, or handling your traffic. Thank you for your support.