Introduction
A.R.E.S. is an abbreviation for "Amateur Radio Emergency Service". It is one of the field organizations of Radio Amateurs Canada (RAC) Incorporated. If you are looking for further general information about ARES or RAC please use a reference from the list of interesting links, below.
This site is intended to serve as a resource center for three groups: primarily, registered volunteer members of A.R.E.S. Niagara, secondarily, interested amateurs and lastly any other person or group who might be, or become, a client for our service.
Info about the local chapter of the Ground Wave Emergency Network.
CANWARN, Weather & Radar Sites
Various CANWARN, weather forecast, weather radar links for Canadians (in southern Ontario) or Americans (in western New York).
A.R.E.S. Niagara conducts a net on its designated repeater, VE3RAF (145.190 MHz, neg. (-) offset, 107.2 hz PL tone), each Wednesday evening beginning at 19:00 (7:00 pm). All registered volunteers are encouraged to check-in, pass traffic and listen to any announcements. All amateurs are welcome. This page indexes documents that will be useful to net control station operators, primarily.
An index to documents useful to all registered A.R.E.S. Niagara volunteers, some of which are: Activation Telephone Tree and Registered Volunteers Roster Names, Call signs, phone numbers, email addresses, postal addresses of all registered volunteers as well as a description of our telephone tree procedure; Emergency and Disaster Radio Operations Procedures Guide - a six or seven page booklet discussing proper procedures for providing supplemental emergency communications; ICAO Phonetic Alphabet - a simple chart displaying the International Civil Aviation Organization approved phonetic alphabet with pronunciation mnemonics; and finally a Printable A.R.E.S. Registration Form for those amateurs and non-amateurs who would like to sign-up.
Hospitals Radio Network Documents
An index of A.R.E.S. Niagara / Hospitals Radio Network related documents such as: Channel List; Tactical Call Sign List; Radio Operators Instructions; Emergency Message Form samples.
An index of technical notes covering a variety of Amateur Radio related topics, many from an A.R.E.S. perspective, such as: Coax cable, Several antenna designs, VSWR, Emergency power for mobile or portable transceivers, and Many others. All told, there are 33 technical notes (and counting).
Links to ARES & EMO Resources such as: R.A.C. ARES, Ottawa ARES / EMO, Durham (Ontario) Region ARES, A.R.R.L. ARES, ARES Hawaii - Emergency Communications Lessons, Orange County (California) ARES - Hospital Disaster Support Communications System & many others
An index of other notable link categories.
An index of all viewable image categories of thumbnails linked to full size pictures taken at/on: various A.R.E.S. Niagara events.
An index of all download-able file categories. Main, Weekly Net, Hospitials Radio Network or Tech Note documents are available as Adobe Acrobat Reader PDF files. Also, there are links to download the Adobe Acrobat Reader install program for either 32 bit (Window 9x) or 16 bit (Windows 3.x).