Sunday Dec 20th 2009 witnessed a Simplex VHF Activity for disaster management in Delhi and NCR Region. It all started with the proposal by VU2OEC OM Rajesh Chandwani (Regional Coordinator - ARSI) to do a mock drill in case repeater stops to function in NCR and how hams can effectively communicate with each other during any real event in the simplex mode.

Originally scheduled for sunday morning at 1000 Hours, the time was rescheduled as per request of NCR hams community. Finally the Delhi-NCR Simplex VHF Test was done at 2100 hrs (IST) at 145.200 MHz.

The airwaves were active with participation from 27 members from NCR, and one from Mussorie.

After the quick roll call, the control was handed over to VU2OB (Sree), whose QTH is approximately in the Center of the NCR Region.

He invited the hams by their call signs for the transmission and note down the log of the TX. All participating hams noted down the signal report at their end for all stations received during this window. The purpose was to test how much power was required and to what distance did it travel without introducing any noise.

No rag chew was permitted in view of the specific objective and purpose of the activity to simulate disaster communication management.

The target to finish Delhi VHF Simplex net before 2130 hrs (IST) was accomplished fairly easily despite participation from a number of ham radio operators and at 2130 Hrs everyone was back in the duplex mode on VU2DLR repeater (145.600 Mhz - Shift 0.600 MHz)

All logs for the activity need to be mailed to VU2UKR - for further analysis and dissemination of information.

Read More articles on Disaster Management and Role of HAM Radio in Disaster Management and Risk Mitigation