Yolo County ARES Meeting
March 16, 2010 – 7:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
The march 16 meeting was sparsely attended as many members had other commitments or traveling plans this evening.
Members present:
Bill, K6KN
Greg, Kg6SJT
Todd, KE6FCV
Rick, N6KLB
Gary, WA6TQJ
During this abbreviated meeting, the following items were discussed:
Rick, N6KLB, gave an overview of mesh net works.
He noted that mesh networks can work up to 20 miles (line of sight) using Linksys routers. You can connect, with some modification, multiple routers that will create a self-healing network on 2.4 gigahertz. If you get this running under part 97 rather than part 15, you can send live video and the like.
The neat thing is that with multiple routers, if one goes down, the mesh network is able to adapt and pick a different path to connect, without user intervention.
Rick mentioned that Channels 1-6 ARE in the ham band and you can kick up the gain.
One draw back is that 2.4 gigahertz is basically line of sight and doesn't go through vegetation well.
Gary, WA6TQJ, talked a bit about the presentation on Net Control Operations that he will give at the Sacramento Valley Section Emergency Communications Seminar. His presentation will be based on the the presentation given to potential Net Controls at UC Davis plus a live demo of "teaching net controls" how to handle situations.
His presentation will be a model for training Net Control Stations.
Todd, KE6GCV, was able to use his iPhone to call up a map of how to get to the U.C. Davis Sierra Foothills Research and Extension Center where the Emergency Communications seminar will be held. It takes about 2 hours to get there.
Bill, K6KN, talked a bit about the presentation that he will give on measurement technology at the next YARS meeting such as impedance meters and the like.
The meeting adjourned at 7:35. Most members then proceeded to check in the last BARK Tuesday night net. Starting March 21, the BARK net will be moving to Sunday night at 7:30. It will be followed by the Sunday night packet net.
