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Show Radio club ready to assist with disaster auditorium. Members of the public are invited to attend club meetings. If disaster should strike Davis County and wipe out normal communication com-munication channels, a group of volunteers stands ready to assist county agencies. Members of the Davis County Amateur Radio Club are prepared to offer their services to the county if the need arises. Recently, the American Legion (Utah Department) Depart-ment) aided this group in its efforts at preparedness. Rich Fisher, Layton, presented a $300 check to Brent Twitchell, president of the radio club. The money was donated by the American Legion Civil Defense Committee and will be used to purchase pur-chase additional batteries to be used as backup power for the club ham radio repeater located on Antelope Island. cells, and temperatures of the equipment. According to Fisher, this provides needed monitoring without costly visits to the island. Fisher praised the repeater as a valuable civil defense tool. He said that it allows hams to aid the county in times of civil disaster by extending exten-ding radio coverage into the many canyons of the county. To further demonstrate their . commitment to disaster assistance, members of the club participated in the 1990 Annual Field Day Emergency Preparedness Exercise on June 23 and 24. Field Day coordinator John D'Ausilio of Layton said that the club set up and operated an amateur radio station powered solely by large solar cells. The cells were used to operate the station during daylight hours and to charge bat- The repeater boosts the power and coverage of the signals from the ham hand-held transmitters and allows effective communications in all situations. The repeater was constructed by club members for civil defense, emergency and community use. Since there is no commercial power available on the island, solar cells arc used to charge the batteries that run the equipment. The new batteries, bat-teries, purchased with the donated money, will serve to back up the existing ex-isting system. The Antelope Island installation is quite sophisticated and allows ham radio operators to patch into the telephone system for emergency calls if necessary. In addition, the system can store and forward messages, and provides telemetering telemeter-ing of data about the site, solar teries for night use. The exercise began at noon on Saturday, June 23 and continued through 3 p.m. on Sunday, June 24. During that time radio operators attempted at-tempted to make contact with as many other radio stations as possible. possi-ble. The site for the exercise was located three miles below the Monte Cristo campground on Utah route 39 and was open to members of the public who wished to observe. Club members are Davis County Amateur Radio operators licensed by the Federal Communications Commission. The club is active in providing emergency and community com-munity service communications. The club meets on the second Saturday Sat-urday of each month in the Farmington Farm-ington Sheriff's Department |
