Travis County ARES Overview

Visit the Travis County ARES Website

The Travis County Amateur Radio Emergency Service (TCARES) provides emergency communications to several served agencies with the motto “When All Else Fails …”. Monthly meetings are held the 4th Tuesday of the month at 7:30 p.m. on Zoom. Weekly Nets are each Sunday evening at 7:00 p.m. on the 147.36+131.8 or the 146.940-107.2 backup repeater. Activities include training, certifications, exercises, and events, in addition to responses to communication emergency incidents. Visit  http://www.tcares.org for more information.

Our served agencies include:

• City of Austin Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management (HSEM) – TCARES maintains and operates a station, W5TQ, at the City of Austin / Travis County Combined Transportation, Emergency & Communications Center (CTECC).
• ARCHES (Amateur Radio Communication for Hospitals’ Emergency System) – TCARES provides back-up voice and packet communications between 15 area hospitals and CTECC.
• Austin Disaster Recovery Network (ADRN) – TCARES provides supplementary radio operations to needs assessment and disaster recovery efforts.
• Critical Infrastructure Awareness (CI) – TCARES gathers information on the functionality of basic infrastructure and provides that information through the Military Auxillary Radio System (MARS) to the Department of Defense (DoD) and Homeland Security in the event of terrorist or cyberattack.
• Austin Rapid Response Team – Natural Disasters can make communications infrastructure inoperable, non-functional or overloaded. TCARES provides back-up communications locally, in adjacent counties or regionally.
• National Weather Service (NWS) – Weather nets are activated any time a severe weather warning is issued for Travis County. Weather reports according to SkyWarn guidelines are reported through the WX net to the NWS, all area EOCs, and all Austin TV stations through a controlled chat room.
• American Red Cross in Central Texas – TCARES provides back-up communications as needed within the Disaster Services Technology function.
• Volunteer Organizations Active in Disaster (VOAD) / Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) – Communications are provided to member agencies as required.

If you are interested in supporting one or more of these served agencies, please join us on our weekly nets or monthly meetings.

WinLink Wednesday provides a regular opportunity to test our hardware and software configurations, and to practice our skills in using the WinLink radio email system (https://www.winlink.org/). Announcements and reminders go out to past participants via WinLink and via the TCARES website (https://tcares.org/). Also visit https://winlinkwednesday.com/ for updates and more training information.

Any TCARES licensed amateur capable of sending and receiving WinLink radio email via VHF or HF, or Telnet, is welcome to participate. Free Winlink account registration and Winlink Express client software (Windows only) is available at https://winlink.org.. For Linux and Mac OS X, as well as Windows, there’s PAT client software for Winlink available at https://getpat.io .

WinLink training topics will be included in the acknowledgements that are sent. These will include important features and characteristics of the WinLink system (scripts, P2P, creating templates, message precedence, white lists, compressing files). Also included will be tips, shortcuts, definitions, links to other system and training information, etc.

The preferred method is to use any VHF or HF RMS gateway to send your check-in through your radio. Initially, if your setup is not capable of digital transmission, you may use Telnet. Transmitting through a Gateway is the real value of WinLink.

W3MRC-10 on 145.730 MHz is a public RMS Gateway available 24/7/365. Coverage is quite good around Travis County. You can use the W3MRC-10 gateway, another VHF or UHF gateway, or an HF gateway to participate in WinLink Wednesdays. The WinLink Web site, https://www.winlink.org/RMSChannels , has maps and lists of all the gateways available for use. Also check the Texas RMS Packet Station Uptimes, http://n5tw.ecpi.com/rmsstatus/, for current status of central Texas gateways, nodes, digipeaters, etc.

All TCARES participants are encouraged to add WinLink, an important part of our ARES® response capability, to their amateur radio toolkit. It’s easy to do, and if you are already set up for digital modes you have all the hardware you need. If not, find a buddy to help you set up your system.

To join this activity, follow the check-in procedure below.

Check-in Procedure

Check-in anytime between Sunday and Wednesday midnight. Check for incoming messages anytime after that. All check-ins will be acknowledged, and a complete list of check-ins will be sent via WinLink to all participants. Try to read that message before the next check-in.

Please remember to use the correct format for check-in, as shown below:

To: AG5TR
Subject: //WL2K TCARES WinLink Net Check-In
Message body: call sign, first name, city or town, Gateway used (W3MRC-10, N5TW, etc, or Telnet), Session type (Packet, Pactor, Winmor, Telnet, etc)

Example message:
W5RZG, John, Austin, W3MRC-10, Packet

2019-05-28 — GO KIT by (Peter Velasques,KF5MIB – PDF version -or- Original PPT version

2018-09-23 — Backup Generators, by Kerby Spruiell, KG5DLD

2018-08-28 — Army Futures Command Activation (PDF format), by Kerby Spruiell, KG5DLD