Monthly Meeting

WECG meets the second Thursday of every month at 7 PM (19:00) at the SAR building: 1041 W Smith Rd, Bellingham.  Our meetings usually run about an hour and a half to two hours, with about half of that time devoted to general group topics and the other half to training. Our February training was a presentation by Lauri McBeath on SAR Base Camp Operations, which is a requirement for all members to attend in order to be field-ready.

Minutes and recordings to meetings are available on the WCSAR SharePoint site. For more information, contact meetings@wecg.org.

Our next monthly general meeting is Thursday, October 10, 2024, at 7:00pm, at 19:00 at the SAR building on 1041 W. Smith Rd, Bellingham.

Training

Trainings occur at our monthly general meeting and other times as available and are open to anyone who would like to attend, including non-members. An email will go out to members. Topics include antennas, SAR Topo, GoKits, the WECG Comm Van, and HamWan, Vara-HF, VaraC, and much more.  We also cover WECG equipment and its use. We plan to cover SSTV, and along those lines it’s almost certain that we shall cover directional beam usage, and perhaps satellite/ISS/EME reflections, all in the context of emergency resonse.  Our trainings have a focus on emergency radio; If you’re interested in more general radio knowledge and training, check out the Mount Baker Amateur Radio Club, which actively supports helping amateur radio operators become more proficient.

We also have future plans for a much more advanced deep-dive into how to use DMR (possibly over several days) as well as a weekend orientation on the van: opening it up, getting it to a mission area, and using the radios inside it.  We also plan to have another GoKit demonstration given the success of that training at a past meeting. You do NOT have to be a member of WECG to take part in these trainings, which usually happen on the same evening as the general meeting (second Thursday of the month)!  There is no cost, and everyone is welcome, not just licensed radio amateurs.  We also have special trainings, including the SAR Base Camp class that serves as a sort of orientation about how to respond to SAR callouts.

Member suggestions will be solicited and incorporated into the training plans, so if you have some thoughts about what you’d like us to cover in the future, please plan to attend and offer them!

Upcoming Broader Training Opportunities

These training opportunities occur on the last Saturday of each month (if they happen) and are generally only open to WECG members and other unit volunteers with WC or BAC numbers and tactical calls.  We list them here to give prospective members an idea of the sorts of broader trainings that we and our sister units offer.  You need to have a county emergency worker number in order to take part.  Please attend a WECG General Meeting to learn more details and to volunteer to help out!

• Practice using Winlink over radio (not telnet) links
• Simplex radio mapping of Whatcom county west of the Cascade mountains
• A general-meeting presentation of computer simulation of the radio mapping with our empirical results

Regional Events

Find amateur radio events around the northwest here. Tne next events that WECG is participating in include:

• Repeater Roundabout starting Saturday, November 23 at 0:00 PST and running 48 hours until Sunday, November 24 at 23:59 (4 of the WECG 173 repeaters are part of the contest.
• Winter Field Day 2025 Saturday and Sunday, January 25 & 26 (more details to come)

Among the previous events that we have recently supported with radio field teams or attended in support of our communities:

• The Ski to Sea race (May 26, 2024).  WECG and our sister SAR units support teams to help keep participants safe.
• DART (Disaster Airlift Response Team) (June 7-9, 2024).
• Field Day 2024 (June 22-23, 2024).  WECG always participates in Field Day!
• Everson Summer Festival 2024 (July 12-13).  WECG provided radio support.
• March 16, 2024: DART (Disaster Airlift Response Team) Thunder Run at Lake Whatcom.  This was training for airlifting food and supplies into areas stranded by regional disasters like earthquakes.
• July 23, 2023: SARTopo training at the SAR building.  SARTopo is a specific mobile application that we use in the field for mission callouts.
• July 8, 2023: Everson Summer Festival. The SAR Council had a table set up to raise awareness of Search and Rescue, and WECG members represented our group.  The WECG “Red Van” participated in the parade.
• Field Day 2023 (June 24-25, 2023).
• The Ski to Sea race 2023.
• The Whatcom Classic race 2023.
• The Chuckanut 50k race 2024.

Winter Field Day 2025

Winter Field Day 2025 is January 25 & 26.  Field day is an opportunity to test our gear and operations in simulated emergency conditions; in the heat of 2021 there were widespread power outages, but our WECG members didn’t even notice because we were running on batteries, solar power, and generators, all the while taking part in the normal ARRL Field Day radio activities.  It’s also a great excuse to socialize, even if cold & rainy!

 

 

 

Missions

When dispatched by the Whatcom County Sheriff Department, call-out coordinators will assess our resources and respond accordingly. The call-out coordinators operate on a rotating schedule:

Would you like to be a call-out coordinator or a van driver or a net control operator or a support person? If so, contact volunteer@wecg.org. There is always a need for volunteers.