MARS Exercise to Simulate a Coronal Mass Ejection;
Collaborate with Amateur Radio During Aftermath
"Beginning the week of 8 November, MARS will participate in a
quarterly contingency HF exercise in support of the Department
of Defense (DOD)...."
Fellow Amateur Radio Operators,
Thanks to everyone who was able to participate in the DOD-MARS-Amateur Radio Exercise from 8-10 Nov. We appreciate your support and efforts in helping to achieve the training objective of contacting as many of the 3,142 US counties during this exercise via radio only means. We are still compiling the results of how many counties were contacted.
I am now collecting After Action Report comments and recommendations for how to improve our processes of reaching out to the amateur radio community during these types of exercises.
I have already received a few comments and am interested to hear if there are other comments or recommendations, both good and bad, for how to improve this process.
Here are my thoughts on what I need to improve:
1. We need to better integrate MARS operators into their local ARES/RACES organizations locally, so they already know when and where your nets regularly meet and how to get ahold of you. We are also considering the need to plan for MARS operators to monitor specific RACES CPG 1-15 frequencies, the 5MHz interop channels, or maybe the HF-ALE channels, then announce monitoring windows and specific frequencies where we can be reached.
2. The way I structured the coordinating correspondence for the exercise was too cumbersome. This required an initial coordination email from me to you and copied a MARS Region Director who then had to appoint someone to contact you and then figure out when and where your regularly scheduled nets operate. I know in some cases, the follow on linkup didn't occur due to a number of factors. The initial email should contain the information from #1 above to give you certainty from the outset of what the link up plan will be. For those that were not contacted, I apologize for my lack of a more succinct plan for how to do this coordination.
3. Because of the way I structured the coordination, I had to cut off coordination several days prior to Startex which left at least 30 amateur Radio Operators out of the exercise. I need to have a better coordination plan so there is no cutoff - so that if you are able to participate, just jump in and contribute.
Again, thanks for your interest in this exercise. My hope is that we can continue to improve this process and make coordination for these types of exercise more routine. I also want to consider scheduling a MARS exercise in conjunction with already established amateur radio exercises such as annual simulated emergency test exercise to give us more opportunities to train together in the future.
I look forward to reading your comments.
v/r
Paul