Goals and Standard Operations for the Exercise- Operation Juan II
The primary goal is to enhance and evaluate the working relationship between the American Red Cross and Emergency Amateur Radio operators.  This will be primarily a communications drill.  ERVs will not be moved but simulated.  Shelters will not have clients but staff only.  No feeding will take place.  All hams should bring food, drink and any medication needed to their assigned area.

This drill will be implemented in the following ways;

The Drill will begin with a weather bulletin read by the SKYWARN desk at the National Weather Service, Blacksburg.  This bulletin will also be read on HF for those outside of the Blacksburg repeater coverage.

Shelters will be opening with Red Cross staff and Amateur Radio operators.  At the shelter sites, the radio operators will receive messages by voice or Winlink and then pass the messages to Red Cross staff.  Red Cross staff will compose answers that will be transmitted to those that the replies are addressed. 

At the chapter level, staff will acquire needed information from the shelters and from the regional office.  This exchange of information will assume that their is no conventional communications within 50 miles of the center of Roanoke.  Amateur Radio will form the communications link between chapter, shelter, region, partner agencies, and the National Weather Service.  If you are beyond the 50 mile radius, you will still need to communicate via radio because those within the simulated impact area will have no other means of communications.

Hams will setup effective stations form their assigned areas.  An effective station will provide consistent information between their assignment and other stations that are supporting their efforts.  Not all stations will have HF capabilities but should be within range of a station that can relay traffic via HF.

Stations with digital capabilities (Winlink 2000) should be prepared to pass "Safe and Well" outgoing and incoming traffic.  This simulated traffic would not be feed into the "Safe and Well" Red Cross server but in a actual situation, would be entered in the Red Cross database.  This system will be replacing the old "Heath and Welfare" traffic.  The new system will compare inquires to those that are registered in the "Safe and Well" system and hits would be automatic. 

Red Cross personnel should have a thumb drive, and laptop.  They can then use these to compose and reply to messages by giving their thumb drive to the hams for download and sending of messages.  This is not needed for "voice" messages.  These are short and may be and written and given to the ham operator.  Hams using Winlink need to be skilled in "copy and paste" to reduce the need for retyping informtion that is already at hand. 

Red Cross may request of the ham at their station to speak direct (3rd party traffic) to other non-hams at other locations.  The ham control operator will be responsible for making the legal ID during and following 3rd party traffic.  This means IDing with your FCC ID every ten minute and at the end of the communcations.  A statement at the end such as, "This is W4GHS clear after 3rd party traffic with Joe Blow and John Q Public" would be good.  It would also be good to enter the names of third party traffic in your log sheets.  A little instruction to the non-hams prior to using 3rd party would be extremely helpful.  A point that needs to be made is that the non-ham needs to release the mike push-to-talk button to hear the reply.  Another instruction is to make sure the mike botton is keyed a second or two before talking and after talking to prevent parts of sentences from being missed due to the non-ham being slow on fast on the PTT.  If non-hams refuse or are not interested in using thrid party, don't push the issue and pass the message content for them.

Stations throughout the Blacksburg NWS Weather Forecast Office will be sending simulated weather reports and receiving simulated weather bulletins via SKYWARN.  Hams operating on SKYWARN only may be ask to check on roads, rivers and streams and give a simulated report to the NWS.  These locations should be close to their station location.  Shelters will be ask to give simulated reports on weather situations near their shelter.  Blacksburg NWS has VHF/UHF and HF capabilities. SKYWARN's email will be operation so Winlink traffic many be sent to their SKYWARN email address found on the Agency page of this site.

We will be having a RED Team (Rapid Emergency Deployment Team) coming for Richmond to support the Roanoke or Lynchburg area.  We have two other Comm Trailers that will be supporting local efforts.

THIS PAGE WILL BE MODIFIED AND ADDITIONS WILL BE MADE ON THIS PAGE UNTIL THE DATE OF THE EXERCISE, CHECK BACK OFTEN.  Check the date in the header to know when this page has been updated.
This page was last updated: December 29, 2014