Training update 22nd March 2012

Hi All
 
The next training workshop session will be taking place on Saturday the
31st of March at the Great Baddow Millennium Centre. We have the Tower
room booked from 10Am until 4PM.
 
In this session the core topic will be repeaters and talk-thougth units.
We plan to look at how they work along with the techniques of operation
using them. Unfortunately we have not be able to prepare much in advance
due to ongoing work commitments however we should have a selection of
hardware available to use.
 
As you are probably aware this year is also a membership renewal year.
I'll print off membership forms so they can be completed on the day,
 
To let us know approximately how many forms to print please could you
confirm, by return e-mail, whether you plan to join us on the 31st.
 
Best regards
 
Geoff Tiller
 

Update 1st February 2012

Dear All

Just a quick note to say thank you to those members who came along to the training workshop last weekend. While turnout was low we had a very useful session looking at the cusrrent floodplan and some of the marker points which might be included in any floodwatch incident.

It was noted that the data on locating and safely monitoring these points may need to be updated and any assistance from members would be gratefully received. To see the current data on the flood markers please visit

http://www.essexraynet.co.uk/Training_Tidalinfo.htm

and click on the links at the bottom of the page to view the detailed information. John G7DBM very kindly produced a set of CDs with loaded with this information, allowing offline access to this useful data. I have a couple of CDs left over from the day, if you would like one please let me know. 

We also spent some time looking at APRS, in particular the new APRSISCE/32 APRS client software, as it is under current development it is being constanty updated to add new fearures as they are designed it is a very attractive alternative to UIview which many of us have used in the past. In addition the use of Open Streetmap makes the provision of detailed mapping of a wide area a more practical consideration.

In addition we looked in more at the messaging facilities of this software and tested basic messaging between APRSISCE/32 and the Byonics Tinytrak4 with the screen and keyboard interface, this was very effective for passing short messages. We hope to continues testing and getting more expeienece of messaging, not only it is an interesting technical development but we all felt it could make operations at incidents and events more efficient.

I hope to see you at the next workshop day in March.

Best regards

Geoff
 

UPDATE. 24th January 2012

 

The first county training workshop session will be held next Saturday, the 28th of January at the Tower Room, Great Baddow Millennium Centre from 10AM until 4PM. While it would be useful if members can attend earlier in the day If you are only able to make part of the day please feel free to join us when you can.

The address of the Millennium Centre is given below.

Great Baddow Millennium Community Centre
Baddow Road
Chelmsford
Essex
CM2 9RL


We have not received any specific requests or suggestions for areas to cover and while we want these sessions to be informal we have been looking to create a basic structure to guide us forward.

To ensure that we keep the sessions relevant to emergency response in Essex we have decided to use our Flood Plan as this basis. To that end the core part of first session will be used to ensure everyone is aware of the plan and to explain how it was developed and how it would be implemented, in terms of assembling the response, should we be called out and need to activate the plan. 

The Flood Plan, and the associated Callout Procedure can be found on the website by following the links below:

    http://essexraynet.co.uk/_private/Essex_Raynet_Flood_Plan2009.pdf

    http://essexraynet.co.uk/_private/Essex_Raynet_Callout_Procedure2009.pdf

During the course of these sessions we will also be looking at more general emergency response and you may wish to have a look at the other documents in the Downloads area of the website.

    http://essexraynet.co.uk/Reference_Material1.htm


APRS
Following the previous session and through successful use at events a number of members are interested in further use of APRS. It would be very useful to bring everyone up to speed on the ideas and provide an introduction to APRS for anyone who has not been involved to date.

As there is a huge amount of good information available on the internet (and lots of out of date stuff)  I though I would point you at a few useful sources of information. I would recommend members have a look at Bob Bruninga's (the inventor of APRS) APRS web site at :
          http://www.aprs.org

You will find a huge amount of information regarding APRS and the large number of applications. As some of us have discussed it can be much more then tracking. To get a good overview I would start with
          http://www.aprs.org/APRS-docs/APRS.TXT

Some of the information, especially that regarding software is out of date but generally it is still useful. Suitable APRS client software includes

UIView, a very good client but no longer developed (following the death of the author Roger Barker G4IDE), see
          http://www.ui-view.org/

An much later alternative, under continuous improvement, supporting new features and fully standards compliant is APRSISCE/32, while it appears to have fewer maps it integrates well with Open Streetmap and map tiles can be downloaded for offline use. Have a look at

          http://aprsisce.wikidot.com/start

I hope to see you all next Saturday, the 28th of January.

Best regards

Geoff Tiller
Central Area Controller - on behalf of the Essex Raynet Management Committee