Month: April 2017

We are excited to announce that Southwest Missouri Regional Skywarn now has full time coverage into the Lake of the Ozarks area! The KA0RFO repeater transmits on a frequency of 146.955 MHz. with a standard minus ( – ) offset and a PL tone of 192.8 Hertz from a tower 500 feet above Laurie, Missouri. This repeater serves the entire Lake of the Ozarks region with coverage as far north as Jefferson City, Missouri.

We thank KRMS Radio, Dennis, KA0RFO, The Camden County Emergency Management Agency (CCEMA) under the direction of Ron Gentry, and Ernie, W0LTC, for their help in making this link happen so that Southwest Missouri Regional Skywarn can use this very wide-area-coverage repeater system to serve the communities throughout the northern and northeastern portions of our County Warning Area. We welcome all licensed amateurs within the coverage area of the KA0RFO repeater to participate in all of our weekly nets and to benefit from this amazing signal coverage.

Additionally, the Boy Scouts of America Post 30 KC0DBU Repeater, which serves the greater Springfield, Missouri metropolitan area from atop Cox South Hospital, is now linked full time into Southwest Missouri Regional Skywarn. The KC0DBU Repeater transmits on a frequency of 145.33 MHz. with a standard minus (-) offset and a PL tone of 156.7 Hertz from atop Cox South Hospital in Springfield, Missouri.

This repeater will serve as an inner-city relay for handheld and other low power transceivers throughout the greater Springfield metropolitan area. We thank The Boy Scouts of America Post 30 and Frank, KA0JIQ, the trustee, for allowing us to use their repeater. We encourage and welcome all Boy Scouts who are hams to our weekly Youth Nets as well as our Tuesday evening Training Nets.

For frequencies and an interactive coverage map of all of our linked repeaters, please click here.

A recent test of the ability of several healthcare facilities throughout our County Warning Area to communicate via HF is being considered a huge success. Under the leadership of Polk County, Missouri A.R.E.S. Emergency Coordinator Joye, N0OCP, the purpose of this test was to break new ground in an effort to test whether direct communications from facility to facility is possible without using repeaters. Every three months, a net is held across the Southwest Missouri Regional Skywarn linked repeaters to make sure the emergency radios at these healthcare buildings work and can communicate. While reliance on a linked repeater system makes communications over several hundred square miles possible on VHF, the question that seemed to loom was: “What happens if the repeaters are off the air?” Despite mediocre conditions across the HF bands lately, the use of Near Vertical Incidence Skywave (or N.V.I.S.) on 80 meters proves to be a very reliable way to communicate regionally with relative ease.

A total of 17 healthcare facilities participated in the March 16th drill. In a couple of cases where noise on HF was a debilitating factor, contact was made at nearby home stations which were easily within VHF simplex range to the facility in question.

“We moved our communications tests far ahead of what [we] had ever accomplished,” Joye N0OCP says in a follow-up report.

Looking forward, the use of digital communications on HF is also being considered for additional flexibility in getting messages through when voice conditions are limited or near impossible according to Joye. In the meantime, the quarterly tests across the Southwest Missouri Regional Skywarn linked repeaters will continue as planned. Stations not located at a healthcare facility control point are asked to stand by during these test nets which usually occur on a designated Thursday morning in January, April, July and October.

Southwest Missouri Regional Skywarn would like to thank reporter Jeremiah Cook and television stations KSN-TV 16 and KODE-TV 12 in Joplin, Missouri for covering our recently-launched Skywarn Youth Net on their evening newscasts on Sunday, April 10, 2017. Featured in the interview was 13-year-old Caleb, KE0FOE, who is one of three young hams who take turns running the Skywarn Youth Nets on Sunday evenings at 7:30 on most of our linked repeaters. The net debuted in early September 2016.

The Skywarn Youth Net is also run on alternating Sundays by 15-year-old Preston, KE0JGH. Both Caleb and Preston recently upgraded their licenses to General. Brad, KE0FGZ, who is a 21-year-old college student majoring in electronic media production, is net manager for the Skywarn Youth Nets, and he also alternates in as net control.

You can read the entire news story and watch a brief video clip online courtesy of KSN-TV by clicking here.

Jeremiah Cook says he’s studying for his Technician amateur radio license. We look forward to welcoming him into our hobby and to Skywarn in the near future.

The National Weather Service in Springfield, Missouri says that March 2017 was another month with well above normal temperatures throughout our County Warning Area. We had quite a few storm systems move through to bring above normal precipitation for a good portion of the area.

Below are links to several weather events during the month of March 2017.

March 6th-7th – Tornadoes and Severe Storms

March 9th – Severe Storms and Tornadoes

March 21st – Severe Thunderstorms with Hail

March 29th – Tornado and Severe Storms

For more details, click the graphic below:

The Boy Scouts of America Post 30 repeater is back on the air in the greater Springfield, Missouri area! The KC0DBU Repeater transmits on a frequency of 145.330 MHz. with a standard minus (-) offset and a CTCSS tone of 156.7 Hz. from atop Cox South Hospital. Southwest Missouri Regional Skywarn N0NWS repeater trustee Mike, N0NQW says the Boy Scout’s 2 meter repeater suffered equipment failure and was off the air for some time. Using some spare equipment from the 145.49 repeater, the Boy Scouts Repeater is now back on the air.

In an effort to further its mission of encouraging youth in amateur radio (which is essentially the same mission of the Skywarn Youth Net on Sunday evenings), the KC0DBU Boy Scouts Post 30 Repeater plans to link fulltime with the Southwest Missouri Regional Skywarn linked repeaters. This repeater will provide improved coverage for handheld radios in most of metropolitan Springfield, Missouri along with the southward-flanking communities of Fremont Hills, Nixa, and Battlefield. This repeater will be a helpful compliment to the 145.490 Fordland Repeater which can be difficult to access on handhelds from inner city locations due to multipath and other challenges inherent to radio operation in urban areas. You can view the predicted coverage contour of the KC0DBU repeater using our Repeater Coverage Map.

The newly-restored Boy Scouts of America Post 30 repeater along with the soon-to-be-linked Laurie, Missouri repeater (mentioned above) and the forthcoming N0NWS repeater in Macomb, Missouri (read the earlier story here) makes three repeaters that you should program into your radios.

To make it easier, here is a quick listing of these new Skywarn-affiliated repeaters’ frequencies, CTCSS tones, and locations:
146.955 MHz. ( – )  192.8 Hz.  (Laurie, MO: Camden & Morgan Counties)
145.330 MHz. ( – )  156.7 Hz.  (Cox South Springfield, MO: Greene & Northern Christian Counties)
146.745 MHz. ( – )  136.5 Hz.  (Macomb, Missouri: Wright & Douglas Counties)

Southwest Missouri Regional Skywarn will soon have better repeater coverage for severe weather spotters throughout the Lake of the Ozarks area. N0NWS Repeater trustee Mike N0NQW says the KA0RFO Repeater located in Laurie, Missouri – in far southern Morgan County – will soon begin linking in during our Tuesdayevening Skywarn Training Nets and during severe weather outbreaks. The KA0RFO repeater transmits on a frequency of 146.955 MHz. with a standard minus ( – ) offset and a CTCSS tone of 192.8 Hz.
A community service of  broadcast radio station KRMS along with the Camden County, Missouri Emergency Management Office, the KA0RFO Repeater is located atop a 500-foot-tall tower and provides very wide-area coverage reaching as far north as Jefferson City!
We will announce when the new link equipment is installed. Once operable, this repeater will be an invaluable tool as it fills in most of the coverage gaps in our northeastern counties between the Buffalo, MO repeater and the Rolla and Dixon repeaters.

You can view the predicted coverage contour of the Laurie, MO repeater on our Repeater Coverage Map. You can deselect all checkboxes to only display the coverage of the 146.955 repeater so that you can see just how much this new link will help our spotters during severe weather and training nets.
We would like to offer special thanks to Camden County, Missouri Emergency Management Agency Communications Officer Ernie W0LTC for all of his efforts in helping to make this new link possible. We look forward to hearing check-in’s on Tuesday evening from folks in our northeastern counties.

The Green Country Hamfest in Claremore, Oklahoma takes place this Friday April 7th and Saturday April 8th at the Claremore Expo Center. Featured prizes include four HF transceivers along with hourly HT drawings! Claremore is an easy drive for folks in our western counties. It’s located right along I-44 about 90 minutes southwest of Joplin. For more information about the Green Country Hamfest including expected vendors and scheduled forums, please visit their website at http://www.greencountryhamfest.org

A survey crew from the National Weather Service in Springfield, Missouri says an EF-1 tornado touched down near the Short Bend area of Northeastern Dent County roughly 9 miles northeast of Salem, Missouri at about 11:00 p.m. on Wednesday, March 29th. Maximum winds were estimated to be 95 m.p.h. This tornado spent a little more time on the ground than some of our recent tornadoes spanning 2.1 miles. Damage included downed trees and roof damage to several homes in the area. No injuries were reported.