News:
- Obsidian Wave Exercise - 9/19/2026 This is a Black Swan exercise, no power, no internet, no
communications. Last year there was a major outage in the Iberian Peninsula (Wikipedia
article,
Internet
Society article,
SIGCOMM
paper). It showed while core internet was up, it was little comfort to the people
in the area. Some readers might remember the cascade failure that impacted the North East
several years ago.
The peninsula outage also appears to be a cascade failure. The exercise is designed to pass
messages across the US.
If you wish to monitor the exercise (from noon until 2 PM), you will need FLDIGI.
Frequency is
14.068, center frequency is 1500. It will be FSQ for the initial alert. Other
messages will be
Olivia 8-500.
In FLDIGI Notifications, set fsq test1 as a custom text search. There will be
an allcall please
switch to Olivia 8-500 to notify of the change.
- The Post and Courier ran a story on the usefullness of ham radio during hurricanes when towers
and powerlines can be knocked out. Post
and Courier.
While we may not get a hurricane, heavy rains causing landslides could take out cell towers or
make it impossible to get fuel in place to keep them running. I've ben told that cell towers
have enough power for 4-6 hours of operation.
A heavy snowfall with high winds could also cause access isues. We could have outages caused by
nothing more than a lack of power
and an inability to replenish generators.
- GMRS and FRS can make wonderful local nets, but remember, repeater linking is not allowed. The
FCC is investigating the internet linkage of nearly two dozen GMRS repeaters.
- ARES was activated in Winnebago County, Wisconsin following a July 27th tornado. This involved
pairing them with emergency response teams and local officials for damage assessment.
Ground truth is one place we can assist and is critical for the command structure to know when
and where to allocate resources.
August recap
| Week |
Monday SOVARC ARES Net |
Tuesday DMR ARES Net |
Tuesday NFMRA ARES Net |
Winlink Net |
| 2026-08-03 |
0 |
8 |
5 |
3 |
| 2026-08-10 |
0 |
13 |
15 |
2 |
| 2026-08-17 |
0 |
9 |
8 |
2 |
| 2026-08-24 |
4 |
14 |
10 |
3 |
| 2026-08-31 |
|
|
|
3 |
Zeroes can indicate there was no net or no report of participation.
Monthly
| Date |
2 m Chittenden County Simplex |
| 8/17/2026 |
13 |
License count as of 2026-08-31
2,225 strong
2 less technician class and a general became an amateur extra.
| Holders |
License |
| 1020 |
Technician |
| 566 |
General |
| 529 |
Amateur Extra |
| 97 |
Advanced |
| 13 |
Novice |
New licenses as of 2026-08-31
Congratulations to all.
| Callsign |
Name |
License |
Grant Date |
| KC1ZWH |
Dana |
Technician |
2026-07-03 |
| KC1ZWQ |
Alexander |
Technician |
2026-07-07 |
| KC1ZXW |
James |
Technician |
2026-07-25 |
| KC1ZYN |
Kyan |
Technician |
2026-07-25 |
| KC1ZZI |
Robert |
Technician |
2026-08-06 |
| KC1ZZJ |
Charles |
Technician |
2026-08-07 |
| KC1ZZS |
Philip |
Technician |
2026-08-11 |
| KD1AAJ |
Oliver |
Technician |
2026-08-18 |
July Reports
Form 2 (DEC/EC)
Windham County - KA1ZQX - Tim Bell
| Item |
Count |
| Total number of ARES members: |
8 |
| Number of ARES net sessions held: |
4 |
| Number of ARES net sessions held with NTS liaison: |
0 |
| Number of participants in nets: |
18 |
| Meetings: |
1 |
Form 4 (State)
| Item |
Count |
|
Total number of ARES members: |
98 |
| Number of DECs/ECs reporting this month:
|
1 |
| Total number of DECs/ECs in section: |
9 |
| Number of ARES net sessions held: |
21 |
| Number of ARES net sessions held with NTS liaison: |
0 |
| Number of participants in nets: |
126 |
Net Schedules
ARES nets are marked
| Sunday night |
| All day |
Winlink net center 3567 500 bandwidth |
| 8:00 AM |
ARES Vermont Emergency Phone Net* 3.976 MHz |
| 8:00 PM |
SOVARC 10 meter USB phone 28.333 MHz |
| Monday night |
| 7:00 PM |
ARES SOVARC Bennington Repeater* 146.835 PL 100 (Echolink K1SV-R).
SOVARC Club
Net
follows the formal net. |
| 7:30 PM |
ARES WRRC* 146.865 PL 100 |
| Tuesday night |
| 7:00-7:30 PM |
ARES UHF Linked system (NFMRA)* |
| 8:00-8:30 PM |
ARES DMR TG3150 VT Statewide (NEDECN)* |
| Wednesday night |
| 7:00 PM |
Digital Practice Net FLDIGI
THOR22 on 3.570Mhz offset: 1500hz |
| Thursday night |
| 8:00 PM |
JS8Call Net
3567 |
| Monthly |
09/13/2026
2:00 PM |
2m Chittenden County Simplex 146.55 |
* denotes a directed net
ARES nets are dedigned as practice for RACES operations as well.
Please see the calendar page for the most
up-to-date information.
Helpful Links
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