Intro to Emergency Communications Class with SCC ARES/RACES

Since passing my Technician exam and promptly falling down the radiosonde rabbit hole, my ham radio career has been almost entirely receive-only. Time to fix that. I've signed up for An Introduction to Emergency Communications, a hands-on evening class run by Santa Clara County ARES/RACES, and I'll be attending on October 14 in Sunnyvale.

What the class covers

This is the first of two basic courses aimed at exactly my situation: new hams who studied enough theory to pass the FCC exam but haven't yet keyed up in the real world. The pitch from the course description hits home - puzzled by simplex vs. repeaters? Can't tell a PL tone from an offset? The class walks through common operating procedures, the basics of emergency communications, and the part I'm most looking forward to: hands-on exercises actually getting on the air.

Those exam concepts are real to me on paper. I can tell you a repeater offset shifts your transmit frequency and a PL tone keeps the repeater from opening on noise, because the question pool said so. What I haven't done is program a repeater into my radio in the field, throw my callsign out into a net, and have a real conversation through a machine on a mountain. That's the gap this class is built to close.

Why emergency communications

ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service) and RACES (Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service) are the organized side of the hobby: volunteer operators who train to pass traffic when the infrastructure we all take for granted is having a very bad day. Here in the South Bay that's not hypothetical - we live with earthquake faults, fire seasons, and PSPS outages. Cell networks and the internet are impressively fragile compared to a battery, a radio, and someone who knows the procedures. I'd like to be one of the useful people in that scenario instead of one of the worried ones.

It also dovetails nicely with everything else on this blog lately: the same license that lets me chase weather balloons at 404 MHz comes with a responsibility to be capable when it counts.

The details

The class runs Wednesday evening, October 14, from 6:00 to 9:30 PM at the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety. A few practical notes if you're thinking about joining:

• Sign-ups close at 6:00 PM on Tuesday, October 13, and seats are limited to the first 30, so don't dawdle.
• Bring your own printed or electronic copy of the course materials (linked from the event page).
• Bring a photo ID - it's a public safety building and they may check at the door.
• 90% or better class time attendance is required for credit.

If you're a fellow new ham in Santa Clara County, come say hi - I'll be the one triple-checking his offset. 73 de KO6ODW.