Winter Ice Storm drill: after-action report

On Saturday, August 15, DeKalb ARES ran a Winter Ice Storm Progressive Communications Drill, a directed net that steps through worsening infrastructure failures one condition at a time. The scenario was a winter storm taking down commercial systems in stages, and the goal was the standing objective of this drill program: learn who can reach whom directly, station to station, without the repeaters. Net Control was Facundo Fernandez (KK4ODA) at Tucker, with Elliott Fried (KJ4CQJ) as alternate, Greg Mann (WC4Y) running Winlink as WD5EMA, and Scott (KJ4ZZB) running APRS.

How it ran

The net worked through four conditions:

1. All systems go on the W4BOC primary repeater, 146.760.
2. Phones down, repeaters up. Members re-checked in and passed status traffic on voice, Winlink, and APRS.
3. Main repeater down. The net moved to the backup, 145.450.
4. Phones and repeaters down. The net dropped to 146.460 MHz simplex.

Eighteen stations checked in, and thirteen returned self-scoring sheets, a 72 percent return rate.

What worked, and what didn’t

Repeater-dependent operation is in good order. Sixteen stations were still with the net at each of the two simulated repeater failures and moved frequency without difficulty. Winlink held up well: WD5EMA logged 29 entries, with fourteen inbound messages from nine stations, and every inbound message was acknowledged, most within five minutes.

Simplex is not yet a working network, and that is the result the drill was designed to produce. When both machines went dark and the net moved to 146.460, only nine stations reached Net Control directly and one more came in by relay. Eight of the eighteen were lost, an attrition of 44 percent. Two stations passed priority traffic and one relayed for another. Those two things are the whole point of the exercise.

Simplex reachability

Mapping this is why the drill exists, and Condition 3 is the only part that produces it. With Net Control at Tucker, stations heard directly on 146.460 included K4VER at Northlake, WC4Y and KR4CJZ at Tucker, KR4MMO at North Decatur, KJ4CQJ at Doraville, KI4JLT at Indian Creek MARTA, W4TGA, and N4RAR at Fire HQ. NF4L at Chamblee came in only by relay through WC4Y.

This is a first sketch, not a coverage survey. The participating stations clustered in the Tucker, Northlake, and Decatur corridor, and southern and eastern DeKalb remain unmeasured. Reports like these feed the simplex map, our running picture of who can reach whom across the county.

What we take from it

A few of the after-action recommendations:

• Assign relay stations in advance. Only one station relayed in the entire drill; the relay backbone the plan assumes did not exist in practice. Name several base stations as Condition 3 relays, each with a sector of the county.
• Protect the simplex phase from the clock. The net closed 39 minutes early and Condition 3 absorbed all of the compression, which is the most likely reason so little traffic moved on simplex.
• Run a digital shakedown the Wednesday before the drill; several stations lost capability to configuration faults a mid-week test would have caught.
• Publish one APRS address and hold it, and review ICS-213 message creation before the next drill.

Overall

Eighteen stations turned out for a three-hour exercise on a hot August Saturday, worked two repeater failures without confusion, and turned in thirteen honest scoring sheets. That is a healthy group. The gap is narrow and specific: this membership can operate a directed net on infrastructure and cannot yet operate one without it. Nothing here points to an equipment problem. It is a matter of practice, of assigning relay duty rather than hoping for it, and of protecting the simplex phase, and all three are fixable before the next exercise.

Thanks to everyone who came out, to the digital Net Control operators, and to the thirteen who scored themselves honestly. The full after-action report was prepared by Facundo Fernandez, KK4ODA.