RADIO CHECKS & PRACTICE
Please be advised that we now have forty-three (43) registered users. This is a wonderful start to what we hope will be a valuable component of our community resilience and emergency plan. We aim for it to be a mechanism that will enable us to help our own family and our fellow community members in the next emergency/disaster event in our community.
Having said that, it requires you to do more than just say you will participate. You must actually participate. I acknowledge that some of you have yet to get your radios, and we currently have eight on order, but the level of participation in radio checks (and therefore of proving that you can contact Killabakh Base) so far has been dismal.
Please see below:
Fri 15 Dec 23 - first radio check/practice session - 5 users called in
Fri 05 Jan 24 - second radio check/practice session - 1 user called in
This is not a good enough level of participation and practice.
Please do the following:
Commit to participating as often as possible on a weekly basis because this will give you confidence and trust in the system.
What this will achieve is:
You will get to know that you can speak confidently with Killabakh Base (the fire station) you will also get to know who else on the network that you can hear and talk to.
From here on in, I will invite KERN users to not only call Killabakh Base but to call each other and practice using your callsign and doing radio checks with each other. Just remember the procedures:
KERN is a SIMPLEX network.
This means we all talk and listen on the same channel, so only one station can talk at any one time.
Listen out before you transmit
Make sure no one else is speaking before you speak
Press the button for a split second before you speak because you do not want to cut off your first words
Start with the callsign of the station you are calling and then say your callsign; eg:
"Killabakh Base THIS IS wun too fife six Comboyne Road, radio check Over", or
"wun too fife six THIS IS wun sev-en too too Comboyne Road, radio check over"
When responding to another station who has requested a radio check; eg:
wun sev-en too too Comboyne Road THIS IS wun ait fow-er Yarnold Road, loud and clear OVER.
Please refer to the attached Phonetic Alphabet and keep a printout of it next to your radio.
I am looking forward to hearing from you on Friday, and if you know of anyone who has not heard of KERN or committed to being part of it, please ask them to contact me and I will provide all the email updates to them and answer their questions if they have any.
Cheers, Brian
Brian Willey