K9MCE
Macoupin County Amateur Radio Club
West Central Illinois Hamfest
Pana High School Solar Car
It is our initiative as students to strive to expand our knowledge and skills to better our lives and inspire the next generation of students. The Solar Car Challenge has allowed us to apply the passion of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (S.T.E.M.) to a collaborative effort to design and build a functioning solar powered vehicle.
Litchfield Arch 2
Arch 2 performs around 250-300 flights a year with around 275-325 flight hours. They currently fly a Bell 407GX Helicoptor they recieved in November of 2015. Average crusing speed for this bird is 135MPH. Most patients they serve end up being transported to Springfield or St. Louis. They have a total crew of 12, 4 pilots, 4 nurses, 4 paramedics. Pilots have 12 hour shifts while the nurses and paramedics do 24 hour shifts. Pilots that fly these birds have to have at least 2000 flight hours. Nurses and paramedics have to have at least 3-5 years experience.
Okaw Valley Comm Trailor
Larry Shenkel KC9ITK (SK) had a dream of owning an emergency communications trailer that he would make available for use by the Okaw Valley Amateur Radio Club, or other groups that required a communications center on wheels that could be set up on a site in a short period of time.
Larry purchased the trailer and began the task of outfitting it with extra electrical connections, lights and operating positions for use an emergency. He added radio equipment for the Amateur Radio Service, Maritime Service as well as other services in the Bond County area.
Larry unfortunately was unable to see his dream come true, due to his untimely death in June 2012. Following his death, his wife Betty Shenkel contacted OVARC to make arrangements to donate the trailer to the Okaw Valley Amateur Radio Club in Larry’s memory.
After OVARC received the trailer, members went to work to finish the inside of the trailer and made it ready for use as Larry had planned.
The trailer has been used at the annual ARRL Field Day exercises for several years, serving as an operating position for Amateur Radio Satellite communication, MESH networking and antenna support. The trailer has been the communications center for the Vine To Wine ½ Marathon held annually in Bond County. From this center, our net controls operators provide wide area communications coverage to the 13-mile course in rural Bond County.
The trailer is equipped with a small portable generator, police & fire radio systems, amateur radio systems, marine and CB radios with their associated antenna systems. The trailer also has the ability to share Internet service over a broad area around the trailer for use in emergency & routine events.
The trailer, now owned by OVARC is available for use by public service agencies with the communications roles being provided by its members.
Unified Command Post
The 40-foot-long, 12-foot-high vehicle is one of 13 identical mobile command posts distributed statewide. The vehicles cost about $230,000 each, and 11 have been distributed so far. In addition to generators, the vehicles are equipped with cameras that can look at disaster areas from up to one-half mile away, a conference room with a table that can seat 16 people and satellite and landline phone hookups. The camera atop the vehicle can beam images to the state emergency operations center in Springfield. The vehicle will be equipped with six laptops, a global positioning system and software for the laptops capable of quickly generating maps.
Illinois Transportable Emergency Communications Systems
2-VHF Repeater
2-UHF repeaters,
1-800 repeater
1 ACU-1000
9 mobile radios connected to ACU-1000
3-VHF
3-UHF
1-800
1-Starcom
1-Lowband
59 Portable radios
24-VHF
24-UHF,
11-800 (+ spare batteries for each portable) •
10kW Genset Generator
Satellite Dish
50' tilt and raise tower
Power distribution and UPS
Telephone System
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2-way Satellite System providing:
LAN
WAP
Internet access,
EMnet messaging
VOIP via Panasonic Hybrid
6 trunk/18 station PBX
4 Laptop computers + HP All-in-One scanner/copier/printer/fax
Videoconferencing (via satellite internet link)