Skywarn Recognition Day 2009 – K0DMX

This past Friday/Saturday was the 11th annual Skywarn Recognition Day, where National Weather Service forecast offices all over the country let amateur radio operators invade their offices for 24 hours to recognize the work that Skywarn spotters and operators put in during the spring and summer months.

This was the second SRD I had been able to participate in. I wasn’t able to break loose from home until about 1:30 a.m. and I arrived to the NWS Des Moines office at about 2 a.m. I contacted the office on both 2m and 70cm, and also tried to hit any NWS offices on the D-STAR reflector setup for SRD, but I was only able to contact NWS Detroit K8DTX. Our office was planned to use D-STAR as well since we began using D-STAR regularly in Skywarn spotting this summer, but it didn’t quite work out. Hopefully next year D-STAR will be more recognizable.

Field Day and SRD are the only times I really get to work on HF for several varying reasons. Not to mention it’s a very laid-back event, not really as competitive as Field Day (although we do log QSO’s… and Des Moines has been at the top for the past few years), and it gives me a reason to stay up all night.

When I got to the office, George KK7FM and Shane N0ZXJ were still there. Eventually they both left, as George was tired and Shane had already worked a full day at the NWS on Friday. We kept at least two operators on the rigs at all times. While I was there, 80m seemed to be the only open band and for quite a while the only ones on the band were stations we already worked.

Most of the chatter was about the cold weather all around. It hovered around 14-18 degrees most of the night, but there was one sub-zero station in northern Minnesota and a decently balmy station in Florida. It had just snowed in several parts of the southwest as well.

Right around 5 or 6 a.m., new operators on the east coast started waking up and spinning the dials, getting ready to check into nets. Before activity started to pick up, I plopped myself down on 3.850.00 and called CQ. At 7 a.m. I had a deluge of stations calling me on that frequency. I worked about 200 stations on that frequency within about three and a half hours, including both coasts and some Canadian stations. It was a good feeling. Of course I had the sporadic bursts of smartasses interrupting and asking in several rude ways what the hell kind of contest “Skywarn” is without identifying themselves, but it was overall a fun experience.

I ended up leaving to go back home around 10 a.m. — I planned to stay longer than 8 hours, but my ability to form coherent, non-rambling sentences together was quickly deteriorating and so it was time to step away from the mic.

Next year I hope to have D-STAR capabilities for SRD, and I hope that NWS advertises a reflector number on the website and lists NWS offices that will be using D-STAR for the event (like they do already for Echolink/IRLP). I also thought about setting up a live video stream like NWS Detroit K8DTX did — they seemed pretty popular and heard a few comments over the air about their stream.