National Hurricane Center uses IRLP / Raleigh
Reflector 921 |
Just seven days after Isidore made
landfall as a strong tropical storm, Category-4 Hurricane
Lili threatened the Louisiana coast on October 3, 2002.
Lili was the first hurricane to make landfall in the U.S.
since 1999. Forecasters were concerned that Lili could be
a potential disaster for much of coastal Louisiana with
145 mile-per-hour winds and up to a 20-foot storm surge
predicted. Robert Broderick, WE4B and John McHugh, KU4GY in Miami had corresponded earlier in the week with Danny Musten KD4RAA, in Raleigh to use the IRLP East Coast Reflector 921 to coordinate an IRLP-Skywarn / Hurricane net. Using the Reflector would allow all of the participating repeaters and nodes in the affected area to be linked and be heard simultaneously. "Emergency response was one of the primary reasons that we established the East Coast Reflector," said Danny. "We were excited that this new technology that links repeaters nation-wide and beyond could be activated for this purpose".
"With this storm, we
established another milestone in W4EHW's history,"
said, John McHugh, KU4GY, coordinator for Amateur Radio
at the NHC. "Using the Palmetto Radio Club repeater
that was connected to similar repeaters in Louisiana via
IRLP (Internet Radio Linking Project), we were able to
collect weather reports from stations in the affected
area that do not have HF radios." StormStudy weather specialist John
Van Pelt, K4JVP, at the invitation of the Hurricane
Intercept Research Team, traveled from Raleigh to Morgan
City, LA, with hopes of reporting back first-hand via the
IRLP. The Lafayette repeater was out of range to
his coastal location, but John was able to give measured
reports via patch through Raleigh IRLP node 427, which
was connected to Reflector 921. WE4B stated that the
"patch reports from John, K4JVP - the hurricane
specialist in Morgan City, were very well received by the
NHC in Miami". During the Net, an occasional stray
node from Australia or the UK would link to the Reflector
to start a QSO and would be immediately escorted
off. That duty fell to the hands of Jim Price, WW4M
and Jack Thorpe, WA0ERX in Raleigh, Nate Duehr, WY0X in
Denver, CO and Paul Cassel VE3SY in Petersburg Ontario
Canada, who monitored the Raleigh Reflector for 24 hours
to block any node that might interfere with Net
communications. Jim Price, WW4M commented that,
"Because IRLP is linked worldwide, stations from
unaffected areas as far away as Ontario and Colorado were
able to respond to this emergency as net control
operators, which freed up stations in Louisiana for other
matters. If the Reflector is ever needed 24 hours
per day for several days to respond to bigger disasters,
we could even bring in fresh control ops from Australia
to work the late shift when it's the middle of the night
in the U.S." Net traffic on Reflector 921 was
also monitored locally in Raleigh on the K4JDR-KD4RAA
group repeaters as well as in Wilmington. Joe Landers
KE4EUE reported from the Wakefield Virginia node/repeater
that officials from the National Weather Service and
Virginia State Radio Officers were monitoring and on
standby to offer health and welfare if needed. Other IRLP
nodes from adjacent states were listening in on the
Hurricane Net, many of which were ready to offer any
needed assistance. As a bonus, folks could listen via
the internet to keep up with the traffic on Reflector
921. There were streaming audio feeds made available to
the internet from the W4ATC Student Amateur Radio Society
at NC State University and Live365 from VE3SY. With Lili
receiving national attention, many were anxious about
this storm. Fortunately it was downgraded to a Cat-2, but
K4JVP reported that "over a half million people in
Louisiana were without power. Tree damage was massive. It
would have been devastating if the storm had come in as
expected on Wednesday night." Robert Hobbs, N5ULA, EC for
East Baton Rouge Parish, offered his thanks for
all the help during the Net. "It showed a lot of the
guys here locally that it (IRLP) can and will work. Maybe
now we can expand our node coverage in more of the
coastal cities that will be a big help next time. I
really want to get nodes up in Slidell and Lake Charles
so that the Amateur Stations at the NWS offices in both
cities can have access. We have our work cut out for us,
but with a winning track record now I feel it will be a
little easier."
In North Carolina, the KD4RAA-K4JDR
repeater group plans to soon add the K4OBX Outer Banks
and Morehead nodes to the existing N4JDW nodes in
Wilmington to aid in storm reporting and emergency
preparedness along the coast. Other states are also
considering IRLP nodes for reporting to the National
Weather Service and Emergency Management. Information or
requests to use the East Coast Reflector 921 can be
emailed to:
IRLP is the creation of Canadian Ham, David
Cameron VE7LTD. Resources: http://www.fiu.edu/orgs/w4ehw/ http://www.irlp.net/ http://www.kd4raa.net/ http://www.stormstudy.com/ http://w4atc.ncsu.edu/ |
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