At its June 2008 meeting, the IARU Administrative Council endorsed and recommended principles to encourage all radio amateurs "to operate to the highest levels of proficiency, with proper consideration for others using the amateur radio bands." These principles are now available in an IARU-endorsed booklet, "Ethics and Operating Procedures for the Radio Amateur" by John Devoldere, ON4UN, and Mark Demeuleneere, ON4WW. You can get it free from the download area of the WL2K Web site. Do a "Site Login," and then go to "Downloads > Documents > How-to."

Since we finished our recent medical mission to Honduras the end of February, many amazing events are still fresh in our minds! Paul, K9PEP, was our radio net controller and once again he was in the thick of things. We had a medical emergency where several ham radio operators helped to get a severe burn patient out of the remote village of Auka and into a burn center in Tegucigalpa. That was in the middle of seeing the many hundreds of patients we see on a ‘normal’ basis.

A lot has happened in the evolution of Winlink 2000 (WL2K) since Victor Poor, W5SSM, AAA9WL, presented his last paper at the Des Moines Digital Communications Conference in 2004. That paper presented the then current architecture as well as the plans for changes to accommodate ARES and RACES emergency operations. Vic's current paper provides an update of its current design and implementation.

You can download Vic's paper and Powerpoint presentation. See the attached files below.

A new command has been added to APRSLink to make sending messages faster and easier. The SP command places APRSLink into a special mode where anything sent to WLNK-1 after the SP command is treated as the body of the message. To end this mode and send the message you send /EX. You may still use the replay (Y) command to check what APRSLink has collected, but anything else that APRSLink receives (between the SP and /EX commands) becomes part of the message body.

See the section titled "A New and Easier Way to Use APRSLink" at
http://www.activeham.com for more information.

73, Lee K0QED

The Winlink 2000 global radio email system has implemented its fifth redundant Common Message Server (CMS) in Vienna, Austria. This mirror-image CMS will join the current suite of synchronized, redundant hubs to provide further isolation from network failures. WIth current system traffic levels, each CMS is capable of supporting the entire Winlink system on its own, and without saturation. CMS systems are located on the east and west coasts of the USA, in the maritimes of Canada, on the west coast of Australia, and now in Europe.

As of 17 September, the Wien CMS is in full operation. RMS sysops may include it in their station configurations by using the host name wien.winlink.org.

By Bill Sexton, N1IN / AAR1FP MA / AAA9PC, MARS PIO

Ft. Huachuca, AZ--- Hurricane Gustav didn’t just pose a critical final exam for the crisis managers of FEMA and levee builders in the Corps of Engineers. To the volunteer radio operators in Army MARS, too, it was the first real flexing under fire of new communications muscle developed after Hurricane Katrina.

And the system worked.

• At several evacuation centers in Mississippi and Louisiana and National Guard refueling points in Texas, a handful of deployment teams from the Army Military Affiliate Radio System (MARS) provided backup voice and digital communications as Gustav raged past.
• The Army MARS e-mail over HF radio system—WinLink—networked emergency operations centers across the affected zone. The Transportation Security Administration and Southern Baptist Disaster Relief were key partners on the country-wide WinLink net.
• Augmented net schedules kept communications open throughout the region until Gustav blew itself out at midweek. MARS stations countrywide had monitored for any emergency transmission. The Army MARS gateway station at Ft Huachuca, AAA9USA, which is manned by contract personnel, served as central coordinating point.
• Throughout the emergency, some 850 Army MARS volunteers in FEMA regions four and six were on standby to relay critical message traffic from their home stations, a goodly number of them ready to respond with portable Emergency Communications rigs if needed. Fellow hams from the Air Force and Navy-Marine Corps branches of MARS shared net operations during the emergency in a carefully-prepared demonstration of interoperability.

After MARS teams deployed last week to the Democratic National Convention, more will be present at the Republican convention in Minneapolis on Monday at the request of the TSA (Transportation Security Administration).

"I find it hard to imagine a more challenging security operation than the upcoming Democratic and Republican National Conventions," said Army MARS Chief Stu Carter. Calling it "an awesome opportunity for MARS," Carter said that Mike Barrett, K3MMB/AAA9TS, is the Army MARS liaison at TSA headquarters, and is coordinating the deployment. The TSA's own MARS/Winlink teams from Pensacola and Washington, DC have already deployed to Minneapolis as AAN5RNC.

Barrett said that he feels "these events will provide valuable lessons learned and excellent training opportunities for the entire tri-MARS force. We therefore request that all other regions stand by for possible support. DHS/TSA will activate all MARS stations within its network in support and for training. Our resources will have direct contact with Department of Justice (DoJ) and FEMA resources, giving the MARS program an opportunity to further enhance the interoperability capabilities of all agencies."