Welcome to February!
January was an exciting month in more ways than one. There were many days of Santa Ana wind conditions, along with wildfires that caused unprecedented destruction. In past years I was never very concerned with the high winds. This year was different. The wind gusts at my house were insane. Getting alerts via Watch Duty were concerning. I took two days off from work just in case we needed to evacuate. We refreshed our bag of important documents and photos that were originally put together the night the Thomas Fire broke out. Cars were fueled up, the cat carrier was ready. Thankfully we didn’t have to evacuate. Thankfully the barranca upwind from us didn’t catch fire.
We fielded phone calls, texts and email messages from friends and families in other states and countries. They had seen the fires out here and wanted to know if we were okay. We assured them we were fine, though we worried about the next winds due to come in a few days, and the winds after that.
January was educational. I learned I cannot trust Weather Underground for wind predictions. The best I found is Windy.com, using the HRRR model (high resolution rapid refresh), and set to show wind gusts. It provided me with the best information on what was to come in the next 1.5 days. I was made aware of Watch Duty many months ago after asking Ben Kuo AI6YR where he moved after leaving Twitter, but I had not tried the app until after the Palisades fire. Once loaded onto my phone, and configured to alert me to situations in Ventura County, I felt safer. It was like a security blanket. Alerts came in for the Auto fire, the CSUCI fire, and others. VCEmergency.com had a link to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Incident page, where I could see SCE circuits that were de-energized or soon to be. The internet stayed up, I had a constant stream of information.
What else did I learn? Some of the repeater sites we use have limited, or maybe no back up power. After a long Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS), the Bozo repeater went offline. Same with the digital repeater on Rasnow Peak during another PSPS. Reminder for me to make sure I have many repeaters programmed into my radio, and familiarity on which ones are located where.
Finally the recurring Santa Ana winds stopped, and we got rain! Not a lot, only 0.64” at my house, but it felt and smelled good. Looks like we’re supposed to get more rain this Tuesday – I can’t wait.
What happened in January that was exciting in a good way (besides rain)? The club held a VE session on January 18th and this was the first VE session where I scanned all the paperwork and uploaded it to the ARRL VEC portal. By doing so, the folks that took their test Saturday, received their upgrades and new licenses on Tuesday. They might have even received it even earlier on Monday had it not been MLK day – a federal holiday. The old strictly mail method we used before, it would take nearly 2 weeks before any upgrades showed up. From now on we will always be scanning and uploading our VE sessions. By the way, if you are looking to upgrade or get your license, our next session will be March 22nd.
January 25th was cleanup day at Grace Lutheran Church. You already read my summary on Groups.io after the event, but I want to thank everyone again for coming out and helping. We had at least 14 people show up and the Church both noticed, and were super appreciative. It was a great show of support, and I had fun. I hope you all did too.
So what’s happening in February? The 14th is our next club meeting. Paul, WD6EBY will be giving a status on his repeater system. I hope you can all make it! Later in the month is the Ventura Marathon. Look for more information on this from Burt KA6BJA over Groups.io and at our February meeting. Finally we have our regular nets – 2M on Monday at 8pm, 40M on Wednesday at 7pm and 10M on Sunday at 4pm. Frequencies listed on our website.
Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you on the air or at our next meeting!
73 Dave AI6VX
