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It all started in 2007, with 12 licensed members of our Stake. We were only getting 6 or 7 check-ins on our Sunday evening net. The Puyallup Washington Stake has 7 Wards and covers 5 communities. In case of a disaster, 6 or 7 active members with radio's just couldn't do the job, so we teamed up with our neighboring Stake to sponsor Technician classes. The first class was April 2007 and we asked one of the local clubs to put on the class and do the VE testing. The class was held over two Saturdays and we were able to add 6 new Hams to our Stake roster. The following month, May another class was held and 8 more Hams were added. I was one of the eight. The Stake now had 26 members with licenses on the roster, but of course they all didn't have radio's. The Sunday evening net was increasing to an average of 18 check-ins. This was better but not good enough! We had to keep trying to improve our numbers, after all this is the Lords work.A few months later, one of our group was at a ham fest in the neighboring State, and told his friend about our success and that we needed more members with licenses. The friend suggested that we put on our won classes and do our own VE testing. He offered to let us use his power point presentation for the Technician class. All of us members with General license and higher have gotten our VE certification. We now try to have a class once a month. The Technician class this month will have about 40 students attending. Our numbers have grown, we have over 100 members with licenses on our roster now and 60 to 70 check-ins on Sunday. One of our Wards actually has 37 members with Ham licenses. The Stake sponsored a preparedness fair at the local park this last weekend. Of course our Emergency Communications group had a couple of tables and demonstrated the use of IRLP and Echolink. For the IRLP station we had our emergency J-Pole antenna up about 30' and was talking on a repeater 15 miles away. We did really well, signing up mostly members for future Technician classes. There were somewhere between 90 to 100 people sign up. Our classes are limited in size by the number of VE testers that we have, so this should fill the classes for the next few months.We also offer classes to make J-Pole antennas, which is quite popular. The charge is only $15 to cover the cost of the material.There is now a monthly news letter that comes out on email. A great way to let everyone know about future happenings. A couple of months ago we had our second annual Ham potluck (Ham for the Hams) put on by the Stake. This is a great event for members to have an opportunity to see who they have been talking to.During a real emergency, all of the local 2 meter repeaters have been spoken for and there are no more 2 meter repeater frequency pairs available, we decided to look for a 70 cm repeater of our own. If anyone has any experience putting up a repeater and has advice for us, all input is welcome. Also if anyone knows of repeater for cheap, we would appreciate hearing about it also.We are also looking into connecting Echolink to a radio, so the members who do not have a radio yet, can check in to the Sunday evening net via Echolink.Oh, yes, we are working with the local ARES group, and we are suggesting to the members to get their DEM (Department of Emergency Management) cards.Well, that is the Successes of the Puyallup Washington Stake. Lets hear about your Stake.Lee
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Great job. Just got the call here in the Tyler Texas Stake and looking forward to increasing our number of licenecend operators. I have had one introductory class at my house for a few brethern in my ward and looing to do more. I would be interested if possible in a look at the power point presentation you talked about. ::). Will be looking and will return and report.73WL7HE
I can't believe the original message was posted in November! I don't remember ever reading it!!! ;DIt is incredible to read about your success Lee! I am hosting a class right now, four students! Hopefully I get 100% licensed! 😀I would like to see that power point too if you have it available. (You can edit your original message and add the file as an attachment if you like...) I would love to hear about your other activities to get people involved! Do you plan and schedule regular disasters? (just kidding!) I can't get people here to appreciate the need for emergency communications preparedness! We are (blessed and) cursed by good weather and rare emergencies here in Denver! 73, WB7SGLRob
Well : Since my last post we have had a lot happening here in the Tyler Tx. Stake. I have sent names to all the Bishop's in the ward for Ward Communication Specilasts, hopefully we will have everyone in place in a couple of weeks, you know how callings go. Also we have got a Prepardness Fair coming up in April that we will have a booth at. The folks in the Palestine ward are going great guns getting members licensed and they all ready have a Sunday night net going so the work there is doing good, just have to get the whole Stake going in the same direction. My one question is about using stake centers as the Communication center. We currently have nothing set up and from what I hear and read the church has gone away from that thinking. Is that the same from what you guys have been seeing. I know when I lived in Alaska a couple of the stake centers had towers antennas and radio equipment. Also the Bishop Storehouse in CarroltonTx. runs a weekly VHF net but nothing as for checking into the Tues. net for Church headquarters, is that still going??? @ 01:00 UTC. Just trying to get it all together and really appreciate the site.Thanks
hey WL7HE,Just to let you know the Richardson Stake is getting up and running. Dallas Stake has been for a while. Not sure who is between you and us. We cover up to Rockwall County. We have radios in each of the ward buildings except in the new Heath building ( Rockwall). I am trying to find a way to get some members started in ham class that have asked for the class. Dave W7DAV/ AAR6BY
W7DAV: Thanks for the info. We here in the Tyler 2nd ward have only 4 operators while in the Palestine ward they have 19 newley licensed operators. I guess they were doing a one day class and were able to get a lot of folks their ticket. Hope to be able to do the sdame here, and as for the radios in each building??? All VHF or do you have any HF equipment. I think we can communicate with the Bishops Storehouse in Carrolton with VHF from Wills Point and maybe a little farther with a good antenna system. ;D I have such at my place( 120' tower with 13 elements @ 130') Still trying to get a feel what the stake leaders are expecting. Thanks again for the info.
Here in the Huntsville Alabama Stake, we have unit ERC 🙂 communicators assigned for each of the 13 wards in the stake. We have a weekly 2M net on our stake repeater 145.29, it is linked to echolink using W4TCL. Our stake net meets each Sunday evening at 8:45 pm central time, you're welcome to join us anytime.Our area authority has asked our stake president to have an exercise and communicate instantaneously with all 13 bishops in the stake without using the telephone. We will conduct the biannual test on 10 April, 2011 during our regular weekly net. ;D 😀 😉 🙂We have been working on this in our stake for over 50 years, thanks to the efforts of KK4AI. We have over 100 licensed hams in the stake, sisters are also getting licensed because it is highly probably that in time of emergency one of them will have to bring up the net and run it until the brethren get home from work. We have supplied jump teams to hurricane cleanup most recently with katrina. When we get together the war stories about helping members on the gulf coast following hurricanes just begin to flow. 8)
Awesome! I am a new called Stake EMCom Specialist, Cincinnati North Stake, and I find it inspiring to see the successes others have had,
Outstanding work. Our Heavenly Father must be very pleased to see self-reliant on our part to prepare to take care of his fold. Glad to see a success story. Thank you.Marco R.KJ4UGP
W7DAV: Thanks for the info. We here in the Tyler 2nd ward have only 4 operators while in the Palestine ward they have 19 newley licensed operators. I guess they were doing a one day class and were able to get a lot of folks their ticket. Hope to be able to do the sdame here, and as for the radios in each building??? All VHF or do you have any HF equipment. I think we can communicate with the Bishops Storehouse in Carrolton with VHF from Wills Point and maybe a little farther with a good antenna system. ;D I have such at my place( 120' tower with 13 elements @ 130') Still trying to get a feel what the stake leaders are expecting. Thanks again for the info.
Sorry for the delay. I have been traveling for work a lot. The stake has 2 meter 60 watt radio's . No HF since we can get around the DFW area with the 2 meter radio's. I think there are enough Hams in the stake that if we ever needed to push traffic outside the state with HF we would have some ways of doing it. We can get to a couple of stakes easy with simplex so the communication should work just fine. Worse case we set up a wire antenna at the church building which can come back down with the operator if needed but as long as the Bishops store house is up and running they can pass the HF traffic.Dave W7DAV
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