Whittier Fire Update
By Levi K6LCM | https://www.sbarc.org/2017/07/09/whittier-fire-update/ | Club News, Featured
Live camera view from UC San Diego’s High Performance Wireless Research & Education Network (HPWREN) looking west from Santa Ynez Peak
As a reminder, all amateurs are welcome to participate in ongoing discussion about the Whittier Fire on SBARC repeaters. Please keep transmissions short (less than 10-15 seconds) unless you have urgent traffic. Always yield to stations with urgent traffic and leave long pauses between transmissions for breaking stations.
Whittier Fire PDF incident plans distributed at the 1400 press conference on Sunday. Includes frequencies to be used: 070917_iap_day | 070917_iap_night
The County of Santa Barbara is posting official updates on the Whittier Fire on its website.
Look for the live streams at these You Tube channels (option 1 or option 2), from UC San Diego cameras atop Santa Ynez Peak as well as more still imagery. Additionally, this unofficial source has more images as well as weather data and more links to useful fire information.
Santa Barbara Amateur Radio Club repeaters on Santa Ynez Peak have power at this time. The 145.180 MHz repeater on Santa Ynez Peak remains linked via a microwave path to 146.790 MHz on the Santa Barbara Mesa and is functioning as the club’s main channel for communications related to the fire.
The WB6OBB 147.000 repeater on Broadcast Peak is off the air along with most broadcast stations at that location. It is unknown as of this update if those outages are due solely to the availability of power at that site or because of damage to the actual facilities there.
Many photos of the fire can be found on Twitter searching the hashtag #WhittierFire. I am suggesting that members of our community with photos to share via Twitter tag them with this hashtag for easy searching.
For live updates from radio amateurs observing the fire and monitoring emergency frequencies around the county, listen to a live audio stream of SBARC’s linked repeaters.
Air Command tactical frequencies with local air tanker traffic:
These frequencies are simplex so an external antenna will help with reception.
Air Tac 02: 169.150 MHz FM
Air Tac 05: 167.950 MHz FM
Levi C. Maaia, K6LCM
www.levi.maaia.com
+1.805.604.5384
*SBARC General Club Meeting*
*Friday, July 21, 2017 @ 7:30 PM*
*401 N. Fairview Ave. in Goleta*
Imagine sitting in your living room using an inexpensive hand-held radio
and making crystal clear, static free contacts throughout California, the
United States, and the WORLD! This is not only possible, but it’s easy to
do using Digital Mobile Radio (DMR). And, we’re doing this now, right here
in Santa Barbara!
This month, SBARC hosts a special presentation by *Michael Rickey, AF6FB* on
the new and quickly growing DMR digital voice mode. Michael will give us a
demonstration on how DMR works and explain how the PAPA system is
supporting a build-out of DMR repeaters in Southern California, making it
easy to stay connected to the network throughout our region.
DMR is unlike most other digital voice modes used on VHF/UHF FM in amateur
radio as it is supported by several major radio manufacturers including
several low-cost imports commonly used by amateurs. DMR networks can be
accessed from repeaters here in Santa Barbara and also through home-brew
and *professionally built hotspots*
<http://www.grapevineamateurradio.com/store/?model_number=Openspot1>. You
can get on the air with DMR with a *Tytera MD-380 HT for as little as $80*
<https://www.gigaparts.com/tyt-md-380.html?&utm_source=EMAIL&utm_medium=MD38…>
and
access thousands of talk-groups around the world and even chat with fellow
SB hams dabbling in digital on our very own SBARC DMR talk-group.
Most DMR repeaters can access the same talk-groups available on any other
repeater. So no mater where you travel, you can radio home. DMR also uses
TDMA to support multiple users per FM repeater pair and at 12.5 kHz wide,
it is far more efficient than traditional analog wide-band FM.
*SBARC General Club Meetings are held at the Goleta Union School District,
401 N. Fairview Ave. in Goleta, right across the street from the Goleta
Library. Doors open at 7:00 PM and the meeting starts at 7:30 PM. Put the
date on your calendar and bring a guest!*
*[image: Inline image 2][image: Inline image 1]*
*Michael Rickey, AF6FB*