Bexar County ARES draws support and volunteers from local amateur radio clubs. Bexar County ARES uses this Yahoo Group to notify the membership of activation notices for actual emergency call ups, for emergency drills, and for training file distribution as well as reminder announcements regarding upcoming events.

Bexar County ARES meets monthly on the first Tuesday of the month, at 6:45pm. Locations alternate between the San Antonio EOC (on odd months January, March, May, July, September, November) and the San Antonio American Red Cross HQ (on even months February, April, June, August, October, December)

The Bexar County ARES Training Net operates the other Tuesday nights at 8:30pm, using the 147.18 repeater (103.5 PL tone).






To participate in Bexar County ARES, members MUST:
_____1) Possess a valid amateur radio operator license (http://www.arrl.org/getting-licensed)
_____2) Register on the South Texas Section ARES Information Depot (http://www.arrlstx.org)
_____3) Register their call sign with the Winlink 2000 system (http://www.winlink.org/user/register)
_____4) Complete:
________a) IS-100.b Introduction to Incident Command System
________b) IS-200.b ICS for Single Resources and Initial Action Incidents
________c) IS-700.a National Incident Management System (NIMS), An Introduction
________d) IS-800.b National Response Framework, An Introduction

Find these National Incident Management System (NIMS) Training Programs at http://training.fema.gov/IS/NIMS.asp

The well prepared Bexar County ARES member possesses a GENERAL CLASS license, portable radio equipment and emergency power equipment; and is proficient with the following Digital Signal Processing hardware:

________KPC-3+ (TNC)
________SIGNALINK (SOUNDCARD INTERFACE)
________SCS PTC (PACTOR MODEMS)

and the following Digital Signal Processing software:

________RMS EXPRESS
________AIRMAIL
________PACLINK

which can all be found at http://www.winlink.org/ClientSoftware