On Wednesday 6/18/25 at 2011 hours the Sumner County ARES Weather Net was activated on the SCARA and Shout South Repeater System. The net was brought online by NG2S due to a Severe Thunderstorm Warning for Sumner County. NG2S acted as net control and took check-ins and traffic as well as relaying local weather updates to all stations on the net. The net was de-activated at 2051 hours as all local warnings had expired. In total the net had 21 stations check in and multiple weather and power outage reports.
Net Control does not need to have an elaborate station setup. In this case NG2S had an HT for comms, a laptop for logging and his SCARES binder with all the activation criteria, net script and other documents any NCS may need during a net, as well as backup paper logs should power or internet go down.
If you have an HT, a pen and some paper you can operate as Net Control. Be sure to get some weekly training nets under your belt to break the ice before the big one. The weekly nets are training and the more we train the better we are.
Contact Mike, NZ4K, SCARES Co-EC by using the contact us form on this site to request a slot to act as Net Control on a weekly SCARES training Net.
You can read more about SCARA, Sumner County Amateur Radio Association, and the Shout South Repeater System at www.scara.net.
The Sumner County ARES group extends our thanks to both SCARA and Shout South for use of their repeater system.