Trans-Pacif­ic Emcomm Exercise

The recent Pacif­ic Endeav­or-13 sim­u­lat­ed emer­gency com­mu­ni­ca­tions exercise
using ama­teur radio in make-believe ‘Paci­fi­ca’ worked well and showed how
it could be used to get help in times of a nat­ur­al disaster.

A Pub­lic Affairs Direc­tor for the Mil­i­tary Aux­il­iary Radio Sys­tem (MARS),
Bill Sex­ton N1IN, said that elec­tric pow­er actu­al­ly failed in ‘Paci­fi­ca’,
the dis­as­ter hit Asian nation that had a small band of radio ama­teurs seeking
to assist.

The real-life dra­ma hap­pened dur­ing the exer­cise involv­ing vol­un­teers of
MARS the US Defence Depart­ment on August 25–26.

Bill N1IN said at 9N1AA in Nepal, the real ‘Paci­fi­ca’. Dr San­jeeb Panday
and fel­low oper­a­tors kept going on bat­tery pow­er with only 25 watts output.

He said a bit of kind luck pro­vid­ed a low-pow­er dig­i­tal link to a radio amateur
in Afghanistan.

Tim McFad­den, a retired Army com­mu­ni­ca­tor now help­ing train Afghan troops,
had only joined Army MARS less than a month before the exercise.

Bill N1IN said although the oper­a­tion only last­ed just under three hours,
months had gone into prepar­ing for the exercise.

The Pen­ta­gon and US Pacif­ic Com­mand set it up as a test of ama­teur radio
emer­gency sup­port in Asia after Japan’s tsuna­mi cat­a­stro­phe, using procedures
of the Inter­na­tion­al Ama­teur Radio Union. MARS, mil­i­tary sta­tions and radio
ama­teurs collaborated.

“We had sta­tions mon­i­tor­ing in the Con­ti­nen­tal US, Hawaii, Japan, Germany,
and Afghanistan,” report­ed Paul Eng­lish, Army MARS pro­gram officer.

“There was only inter­mit­tent recep­tion in Ger­many and the US on PSK but we
had a sol­id con­nec­tion between Nepal and Afghanistan. About 2 hours and 20
min­utes into the exer­cise, pow­er was restored in Nepal and we did have marginal
voice com­mu­ni­ca­tions from Nepal to Afghanistan and Germany.

“We were able to sub­mit a num­ber of spot info reports to the Pacif­ic Command
and respond­ed to a num­ber of infor­ma­tion requests in a time­ly man­ner,” he
said. “This was a great show­ing by all.”

A star of the show was PSK31, the very basic dig­i­tal mode that trav­els well
on low pow­er, even in the oth­er­wise grim prop­a­ga­tion con­di­tions. “When power
was restored in Nepal,” Mr Eng­lish said, ?we did make lim­it­ed voice contacts
with Afghanistan. Ger­many. Hawaii could hear but not talk to Nepal. Propagation
for voice only last­ed a few minutes.”

Tim McFad­den, after 31 years ser­vice in uni­form, went for his ham licence
after watch­ing a fel­low sol­der work a pile­up with only 100 watts while they
were deployed in Turkey dur­ing 1991 in the Iraq War?s ear­ly days.

Now employed as a mil­i­tary con­trac­tor in Afghanistan, he has a home­brew delta
loop and G5RV installed as an inverted‑V for his Yae­su FT-897D.

A pre­lim­i­nary account had a total of 60 sta­tions logged at MARS headquarters
includ­ing MARS sta­tions using their ama­teur radio call signs.

To avoid mis­tak­en pub­lic alarm the usu­al emer­gency lan­guage, all communication
used terms from the game of cricket.

Dur­ing rehearsals, mes­sag­ing had been dis­rupt­ed by hams seek­ing to contact
Nepal, which is rarely heard on the air in most of the world. That was alleviated
by resort­ing to abbre­vi­at­ed call signs plus the acci­dent of depen­dence on
dig­i­tal dur­ing the actu­al exer­cise. The ‘con­test DX hunters’ reap­peared during
the brief peri­od of voice transmission.

Mr Eng­lish said, “There are many lessons learned from this exer­cise and I
hope for a great learn­ing process for all par­tic­i­pants. Prop­a­ga­tion was challenging
through­out exer­cise. We had real-world chal­lenges just as one would expect
in a nat­ur­al disaster.”

9N1AA had the last word. Dr Pan­day, a col­lege pro­fes­sor of Trib­hu­van University
in Latipur, mes­saged that he was “…very thank­ful to you. You did a great
job.”

The advi­sor for Nepal’s Multi­na­tion­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Inter­op­er­abil­i­ty Program,
the Human­i­tar­i­an Assis­tance and Dis­as­ter Relief, Dr Pan­day said in 2012 that
ama­teur radio was relied on, should a pre­dict­ed earth­quake occur in the future.

- Jim Lin­ton VK3PC, Chair­man IARU Region 3 Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Committee.