The regional office of the American Red Cross periodically conducts communications exercises with support from amateur radio organizations. Montgomery County ARES and MCACS are regular participants. In these exercises, participants set up portable HF stations at various Red Cross facilities throughout the National Capital and Greater Chesapeake region and exchange messages using Winlink, simulating an regional Internet outage. The region encompasses Northern Virginia and central and southern Maryland, including the Greater Washington and Baltimore metropolitan areas, as well as the entire tri-state area of the Delmarva Peninsula. A map of the region can be viewed at: https://maps.redcross.org/website/Maps/Images/DC/RCDCDEMDVA_REG_CO.pdf.

In these drills, some participating stations are Amateur Radio stations and others are SHARES stations operating on U. S. government frequencies. Each station will operate under the rules and regulations governing its authorization. Amateur and SHARES stations will never be directly communicating with one another, but there are no restrictions regarding exchanging messages via Winlink. This is a good example of how we seamlessly transition from our role as ARES operators to MCACS communicators.

The next exercise has not been scheduled. MCACS members will be notified via the member-list when a date is announced.

No experience is necessary; in fact, this is a good opportunity for mew members to get involved in our activities. Of course, we encourage our more experienced members to get out, practice using the equipment and software, share your knowledge with others, and demonstrate our commitment and capabilities to our served organizations.

The on-air portion of the drill typically begins at 9 AM and runs approximately 3 hours. Teams at each location will choose a suitable arrival time so as to be ready to operate at 9. We typically allow an hour or more for setup, depending on the experience of the team members.