In my last post, I encouraged participation in a very realistic EmComm drill hosted by our friends at LAXNortheast. I participated in this event and thought it would be a good idea to share my experience.
This Tsunami scenario is very real for me. I live in Southern Orange County, CA. My city of San Clemente is the closest municipal area to the no longer operating San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS). At this site are a large number of underground “casks” that store spent, but active, nuclear material. This is a very dangerous situation considering the plant is in a Tsunami zone AND along the San Andreas fault line.
During the exercise, I set up a portable EmComm station at a campsite in the San Onofre State Park, less than 1/4 mile from SONGS. I simulated that I was coordinating with the state park rangers to provide EmComm services as needed.
In this scenario, the focus was on Winlink. There were seven (7) tasks that each participant was asked to perform:
1) Maintain a ICS-214 activity log for all activities performed.
2) Send a Winlink ‘Did-you-feel-it’ (DYFI) report to the USGS.
3) Send a Winlink Check-In form.
4) Send a Welfare Bulletin message.
5) Send an ICS-213 General message.
6) Send a Winlink Check-Out form.
7) Send the completed ICS-214 form.
At face value, this looks like a straighforward series of steps that should be completed fairly quickly. What I found, however, was this is not as easy as it appears, especially if you are in the field.
I set a goal to complete the seven steps in less than 30 minutes. In reality, it took me more than 90 minutes to complete.
Below is a cronological list of my experience:
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- I set up my field station at campsite #6 with no issues.
- An Ed Fong portable VHF/UHF antenna was suspeded from a 30′ fiberglass mast. The radio was a Yaesu FTM-300D at 50W.
- The Winlink computer was a mini computer running Windows-11 and Winlink Express.
- An ICS-214 Winlink form was opened in a browser and updated with each event.
- I opened a Winlink USGS DYFI form and filled it with information. I discovered some errors in my data, and decided to discard the form and start over.
- This is where the trouble began. Winlink would not let me open a new form because the old form was locked and Winlink said it could not access it. Huh? I discarded it, why are you locked on it?
- After extensive troubleshooting, this turned out to be a browser/Winlink caching issue, I gave up on Windows. I was losing valuable time.
- I switched to a second mini computer running Ubuntu Linux and PAT Winlink. I rebuilt the ICS-214 form, created and populated a DYFI form, and attempted to send it via the packet protocol.
- My radio attempted to connect to the only available RMS in my geographic area and it failed to connect. ( I had tested this connection succssfully from my home on Friday).
- After several (6) failed attempts to connect, I figured my day was over. In desperation, I sent an Email to the operator of the RMS and asked him to verify it was online.
- The operator Emailed me back and said the RMS was online.
- My next attempt to sent the DYFI form was successful. (Hmmm).
- I sent the Winlink Check-in form without any problems.
- I created and sent a welfare bulletin message without any problems.
- I sent an ICS-213 general message without any problems.
- I sent a Winlink checkout form without any problems.
- I sent the completed ICS-214 form without any problems.
Exercise Debrief
The good news is I was able to complete the exercise.
The bad news is I was very frustrated at how much effort, and how long it took to complete.
You may not agree on my conclusions, but the below items were my reality.
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- The DIFY form collects way too much useless information. This form is not designed for EmComm use. I spent more than 5 minutes filling out this form that added zero value to my role as an EmComm provider.
- You are totally dependent on having a working RMS that is reachable. There are not enough reliable RMS’s in SoCal to handle an emergency at scale.
- You can argue that I should not be using packet, and should switch to VARA. This is a Ying/Yang argument. Neither is ideal. The packet protocols were designed in the 60’s and run at 1200 baud. Do we really think that we can send Winlink messages in any volume using this? Especially if there are dozens of EmComms trying to use the same RMS. VARA is faster – 10x faster. But it costs $69 per seat, is proprietary, and the speed difference is marginal. Bondo on a jalopy.
- I was able to recover from my Winlink issues because I had a second mini field computer. How many EmComm responders have this luxury?
- 90 minutes to complete this fairly simple exercise indicates that I am incompetent, or the technology chosen is not suitable for the job at hand. Maybe both.
- There is a BIG difference between operating from your home office and operating in the field. If you do not believe me, pack up the same gear you have on your desk and make it work at a remote campsite, where you have to run what ya’ brung.
- Do we really think the average Ham with a Technicians license is able to perform this exercise?
- In my opinion, there are too many points of failures in the chain of successful Winlink comms.
Enough of my rant.
The true value of these exercises is to make you think, prepare, and practice. This I did. I learned a lot. I found ways to improve my field gear. Discovered gaps in my approach, and recovered from issues that almost sent me home empty handed in failure. For this, I am very grateful to LAXNortheast for the push.
I still cannot shake the doubts about the reality of using Winlink in a real, large-scale emergency. Consider my view as ‘half-empty’, but if it took me 90 minutes to send 7 messages. How are we to build any confidence in our served agencies that we can perform to their level of demand?
In a REAL emergency, we are expected to respond quickly to a remote location, deploy working EmComm tools in minutes, and have the capability to send emergency EmComm emails in high volumes.
This exercise proved to me, I would be unable to meet this requirement using the existing, and primitive, Winlink toolset.