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By Pauline Masson
On a 60-foot tower, atop the highest spot in the Pacific region, are four radio antennas that enable emergency agencies in eight counties to relay messages using ham radio.
Midwest Testing Laboratories, which is located on the former Nike Missile Base Radar site, provides space for this unique communication hub as a community service. Brown Dog Networks, which is also at the site provides Internet service for the service.
The story of this modern radio relay tool begins with the formation of the local ham radio club, the Pacific Meramec Valley Amateur Radio Club (PMVARC).
In 2014, then city administrator Harold Selby and local ham Bob Masson formed the PMVARC to serve area hams. Both veteran hams, they opted to go to the newest ham radio technology – digital ham radio.
Originally the club was to be associated with the City of Pacific. But after discussions, the City of Pacific awarded to the new club the digital radio repeater it had purchased but never installed, with the agreement that the club would provide emergency communications for the region, and would support and train any youth groups that wanted to learn ham radio.
Regional hams were quick to locate the elevated tower site when communicating from their stations in surrounding communities.
But it was the Franklin County Amateur Radio Emergency Service request to add a Missouri Emergency Packet Network (MEPN) repeater, BBS, and Winlink email gateway to the elevated site for its Hospital Amateur Radio Network (HARN) that turned it into a regional communication asset.
HARN is an organization that connects more than 50 hospitals in eight counties in the by-state region to each other, enabling medical facilities to allocate resources during any catastrophe or mass casualty incident.
During floods, ice storms, tornados, building collapse or multi vehicle accidents, victims scramble to the nearest hospital and HARN enables medical centers to dispatch supplies and medical personnel to the hospitals where they are needed.
Installed at the Pacific tower site is a collection of radios, repeaters, computers, and power supplies connected with co-ax cable, stacked in two cabinets enable regional hams to communicate on a series of UHF and VHF radio bands using 2 meter, 220 MHz and 440 MHz frequencies .
No government entity or taxpayer pays for any of this. This is state of the art communication equipment used as a hobby by a group of federally licensed amateur radio operators – hams. They are granted federal licenses and specific radio bands meant to provide emergency communications when land telephone lines and cell towers are compromised and can never charge for their services.
PMVARC and other regional hams upgrade their equipment and their skills as a hobby and as an emergency communication network. Once a year, on the fourth weekend in June, hams around the world participate in a “Field Day,” where they set up ham stations and portable antennas in remote locations to demonstrate that they can communicate outside their area without the use of commercial electrical power.
This past June 4-5, regional hams met at the PMVARC tower site to set up their remote stations and record the number and distant location of contacts they made. The American Radio Relay League, (ARRL) which has monitored these Field Day exercises every year since 1933, maintains records of contacts made by individual hams and ham clubs.
Through this intricate collection of technology, local ham radio operators, hams traveling through the area, savvy international hams who know how to navigate reflectors, regional emergency communications agencies, police, fire, and hospitals can relay messages to each other through antennas on the tower at the Pacific site.
For some it is the chit-chat of a quick visit, or a test of operators equipment or skill. But to emergency communications agencies it is a lifeline between first responders and area providers.
Hams and regional emergency agencies are able to use this important radio relay link thanks to a consortium that includes the PMVARC, the City of Pacific, Midwest Testing Laboratories, Brown Dog Network, Franklin County Amateur Radio Emergency Service, two neighboring ham radio clubs – Zero Beaters, Washington MO and Sullivan Amateur Radio Club – and a score of technology and artificial intelligence gurus who keep up with the changes in amateur radio equipment.
