doing a bit of regrouping along the way and hope we can get the infrastructure fully operational again.  The summer has been a rough one across Kansas and over two thirds of the United States is dealing with Extreme Heat Conditions.  Plenty of humidity but the atmosphere is so hot that rain evaporates before it has a chance to be rain.

Working on getting a way to get a large enough bandwidth pipe to handle the PBX and RF Gateway at Derby.   Hope to have some of the resources back online very soon.   Both are functional for local operations currently.

Some of you may have heard me talking about Tropo.com in regards to building some VoIP applications.   Definitely some neat things coming up that can be quite beneficial for system control and status notification, alert activation among other PBX / RF Gateway communication needs.   Also there is a way to include SMS to DSTAR Text as well as text messaging to the commercial digital systems.  Will be talking about that as development work continues.

Soon as we can get a PBX up and running again will be back on the nets again …

 Update 5SEP2011

Yes, we are indeed still here. Still a tad on the challenging side, yet we know that we can make it. Definitely been a learning experience for all. It finally cooled off a bit here in Kansas, be nice if it was here to stay. A week in the upper 70s lower 80s for highs is a treat for sure.

We have several off-set “hosted PBX” offerings available. Once we have enough people interested in helping with the cost of operations will finalize the set up. The idea of having some redundancy with the PBX services will come in handy as we have seen this past spring and summer with some of the situations that have taken place.

May the support that is needed be present so we can continue to support those that need are services.

There’s been a lot of activity in the past month in several different areas regarding communications support.

• On 23 May 2009 the *KANSAS*, *NEBRASKA* and *WYOMING* were all put to use in support of ARMAD 2009. We were able to express our appreciation to those that serve in the Military as well the First Responders. ARMAD 2009 provided another opportunity to test the networks in a real time situational event. Definitely appreciate all those that helped.

• Severe Weather 15-18 June 2009 there’s been a number of weather fronts that have moved through the Great Plains lateley. Seems that the *NEBRASKA* is getting the most utilization when it comes to severe weather nets. *KANSAS* is getting some usage as a relay point, but there are still some issues that appear to need to be addressed (the network resources are working fine though).

• There’s been some discussion about the possibility of having a Asterisk Server Party where we can build up some Asterisk RF Gateways for easy deployment to repeater sites as well as having transportable server that can be used in emergency operations. For those that may not know, Asterisk is a software package that has the capability to manage radio and telephone communications. With all the many features available Asterisk has become to be known as a Communications Tool Chest. For more information about Asterisk RF Gateways visit AsteriskRadio.net

• The Digital Exploration continues, we now have access to D-STAR via a private node configuration. It can be accessed via radio and phone. For more information please contact us via InfoQuest.

• Range Test - we need some operators in the Wichita area that can help us with some range testing of the 145.470 and 147.060 Let us know where you are able to reach the systems. Remember a kerchunk won’t work, a voice transmission is required before the system will respond.

Thanks again to those that are helping with everything.

When the power fails will your equipment still operate via generator or battery back up?

Is there enough fuel and battery capacity to last several days?

What is the plan for longer term outages?

Do you have alternate sources for obtaining fuel and batteries (that are already charged)?

What about re-charging the batteries, if you have solar and wind power resources available will they be able to recover the load and still charge the batteries?

DARN defined as “to mend by weaving thread across a gap” that is what is being done.   Those that want to see flexibility will go with the DARN approach, as a improvement while there will be others that find it to be just annoyance.    DARN definitely fits the new Digital Analog Radio Networks.

Sometimes logic can indeed be simple (send in most potentially linkable exchange).

One can opt to be static yet knowing dynamic paths will move you.

What does this mean to those that work in the area of emergency response?

Be flexible with the methods that are used, yet maintain the basic standards that allow a incident operation to be conducted safely. Standards which remain static can be used as a basis for operation integrity and also represent a road map to a successful mission.

Standard Operation Procedures provide the static portion for operational planning yet they should also be dynamic so that when new methods are presented they can be placed into the Standard Operation Procedures as soon as possible.

Every situation, every incident is different, thus the need for being dynamic in operational style. At times incidents will take place that are not amongst the normal operational situations. This indeed is one of the times that we need to be dynamic in readiness and response.

Flexibility is a key ingredient to readiness and the “all hazard” approach to emergency response and planning.

As a organization which path are you opting for: static or dynamic flexibility?