A dis­as­trous coro­nal mass ejec­tion (CME) sce­nario will fea­ture in Novem­ber when the US Mil­i­tary Aux­il­iary Radio Sys­tem (MARS) teams up with both the Ama­teur Radio Emer­gency Ser­vices (ARES) and the Radio Ama­teur Civ­il Emer­gency Ser­vice (RACES).
MARS on Novem­ber 8–10 will run the HF exer­cise in sup­port of the US Depart­ment of Defence.
CMEs are huge explo­sions of gas, plas­ma, and elec­tro­mag­net­ic radi­a­tion from the Sun, which are respon­si­ble for geo­mag­net­ic storms – and may in an extreme cir­cum­stance dis­rupt com­mu­ni­ca­tions, satel­lites and pow­er gen­er­a­tion infrastructure.
In today’s dig­i­tal world we rely on the func­tion of com­put­er con­trolled devices, but an ever present threat to them is a CME event.
Army MARS Pro­gram Man­ag­er Paul Eng­lish WD8DBY said he want­ed to con­tin­ue to work with the greater Ama­teur Radio com­mu­ni­ty – hav­ing MARS just been involved with the earth­quake in Nepal.
He said the exer­cise would sim­u­late a radio black­out as well as infra­struc­ture damage.
“Dur­ing the exer­cise, we will sim­u­late the black­out with a 3 hour pause, and then we will bring sta­tions back on air and begin han­dling requests for infor­ma­tion,” said Paul WD8DBY.
Train­ing objec­tives include under­stand­ing the CME phe­nom­e­non, the fore­cast lead time expect­ed, the effects of it and the pre­cau­tions radio oper­a­tors can take to pro­tect their equipment.
— Jim Lin­ton VK3PC, Chair­man IARU Region 3 Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Committee.