Wallace (Wally) Lee Ratzlaff was born at home on October 20, 1936 in Winton California. He was the youngest of three children (Evelyn, Leland & Wallace) born to Ben and Ethel Ratzlaff. His years growing up were rich with the closeness of family and many beloved cousins that doubled as best friends! He grew up working hard with his family in the peach orchards and on the ranch. And from a very early age, Wally pursed a God-given love of electronics and communications, building mail-order radio kits and components. Wally used to say he was “born with electrons in his blood”! […]
Repeaters
10 posts
These photos were from several storms ago, back in November. NOTE: See the horizontal icicles that formed form high moisture content and freezing temps and just the right amount of wind.
California Shakeout Drill UPDATE #2THURSDAY OCT 20, 2022 12:30 PMYou can participate in a special annual emergency net with organizations across California. TCARES and TC Office of Emergency Services are planning an emergency NET to demonstrate the TCARES repeater infrastructure during a simulated communications outage following a simulated major earthquake incident. We are looking for MAXIMUM PARTICIPATION!Our goal is to see check-ins from Pinecrest to Jamestown, from Mariposa to Angels Camp, and from Modesto to Yosemite National Park! (AND ALL POINTS IN-BETWEEN) ALL TCARES REPEATERS WILL BE LINKED, Use the one that works best for you. CHECK-IN format.It will be a directed net, but we will not have a roll call. We will request check-ins by Alphabet Sequence […]
Monday NOVEMBER 22, 4PM on ZOOM. Email Rich Combs at richsfpd@gmail.com for link. Residents of Tuolumne County interested in Fire Safety and Emergency Communications are invited to an online presentation by Alan Thompson, Satellite Internet Field Engineer of El Dorado Networks of Placerville. Alan helped restore Internet service at several downed cell-phone towers in Paradise shortly after the Camp Fire. What he saw there and learned later about the colossal emergency communications failures during the fire, turned him into an “Accidental Advocate” for fire safety and communications resilience. Since 2019, Alan has given over 100 presentations before Civic Groups, Fire-safe Councils and […]
NEW: See video from Pinecrest repeater upgraded to linked system. HOW TO USE: Find all the frequencies for the system. Background For more than several decades, TCARES has established and maintained five repeaters across Tuolumne County. We have recently finished an inspection and survey of the systems and performed some FCC licensing updates as well as renewing some repeater coordinations with NARCC. You can view our current repeater set up here. While the repeaters are holding up fairly well, especially for such old installations. we determined that Tuolumne County could be better served. Currently, someone trying to get help from the […]
On September 2 a cross band FM amateur radio repeater with a downlink on 437.800 MHz was activated on the International Space Station. The Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) announcement reads: The ARISS team is pleased to announce that set up and installation of the first element of our next generation radio system was completed and amateur radio operations with it are now underway. This first element, dubbed the InterOperable Radio System (IORS), was installed in the International Space Station Columbus module. The IORS replaces the Ericsson radio system and packet module that were originally certified for spaceflight […]
Disaster Communications Exercise 5 May 2020 After Action Report Executive Summary By Jim Piper K6MEDDST Radio Communications Volunteer American Red Cross CA Gold Country Region The DST Radio Communications component of the CA Gold Country Region “activates” during disaster responses to augment communications between the headquarters DOC in Sacramento and service sites. It does so by way of coordinating with our partners in the amateur radio community to “be there” when we need them to assist in moving our disaster messages when the public telecommunications infrastructure has suffered an outage from a disaster and Red Cross or public utility response teams […]