We've been meeting on the third Wednesday of the month for as long as I can remember. Every month many of us end up with back to back in person meetings often with the result of decreasing the attendence at our Wednesday meeting. We are going to change our monthly meeting to the last Wednesday of the month. Yes, that means in months with 5 Wednesdays we will still meet on the last Wednesday. And for good behavior we'll plan on taking the month off and not meeting in person in December because everyone is busy with holidays.

We will be examining JS8Call at our March 17, 2021 Monthly Virtual Meeting @ 7:30 PM. How it works, what it does and how it might help us while deployed. Kyle, KD9RBV (and he may have some collaborators) will lead the discussion. I'll be sending out the email with the Zoom information. If you don't get the email soon send a note to kc9unz [at] arrl [dot] net and I'll forward the meeting information to you.

Thanks to Kyle, KD9RBV for his excellent discussion on JS8Call at our meeting on March 17. See below for some of the resources from that meeting

• YouTube Video of the JS8Call Presentation
• Kyle's Presentation
• Main JS8Call Web Site
• Groups.io JS8Call group

On Feb 17 we explored what we needed to know if we needed to conduct a directed net on Simplex with Handheld 2 Meter Radios around Madison. Listening, Passing Messages, Multiple Net control officers.

You can watch the video of the meeting here.

At the January 20, 2021 Monthly meeting of the Dane/Iowa County ARES/RACES meeting we discussed Winlink. Here is the materials from that meeting including a video of the meeting, the presentations and some Nets to check in to.

At the meeting we discussed using the internet to send messages as well as ARDOP (Amateur Radio Digital Open Protocol). At the time we were not able to demo making a winlink connection on a hand-held 2 Meter radio. Since the meeting we did discover that the Local Winlink Node WC9AAG @ 145.610 is up and running. The presentation has been updated to reflect this. If you update the channel list for a packet winlink session, this node will appear at the top of the channel list and communicates at 1200 baud!

Video of the Presentation: https://youtu.be/Xuqd_zjIfAA
Presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1abKCnhn8Xi9YxxW5UMxrTY4yyXgMkKNw...
ARDOP Session Demo: https://youtu.be/29NjgeKHXHs
ARRL Audio News with articles about Winlink, particularly how it was using during the Texas Freeze: https://blubrry.com/arrlaudionews/74300431/arrl-audio-news-february-26-2...

Here are some nets to check in.
Wisconsin ARES/RACES Winlink Net: Tuesdays, send message to KB9MMC subject: WI ARES/RACES Winlink Check-in Body of message (one line): call, first name, city, county, state For more information go to the bottom of the page at https://wi-aresraces.org/
I'll add more soon.

Happy New Year!

We'll be meeting virtually again this month on January 20, 2021 at 7:30 using Zoom. Our subject this month will be WinLink, what it does and how we might use it for deployments. I'll be sending out an email with the Zoom connection information later this week. If you don't get an email from me by the weekend send a note with your call sign to KC9UNZ [at] arrl [dot] net and I'll send it along to you.

Join us for the November Monthly meeting of the Dane/Iowa County ARES/RACES. We are meeting at 7:00 PM on Wednesday, November 18. In addition to additional business items we will discuss the antenna requirements for the new EOC in Fitchburg. Bring your expertise. If you are not on our mailing list and need the Zoom virtual meeting invitation please send an email to kc9unz [at] arrl [dot] net.