The fifth Passaic County Fair took place on the more than 500 acres of the Garret Mountain Reservation located in southern Passaic County, New Jersey. The five day event began on July 16, 2008, but some of the preparations started a year ago, with a review, right after last year's Fair. Passaic County ARES/RACES again provided communication support at the Command Post. We were joined with radio operator members of the American Red Cross, PC CERT, and SkyWarn in coordinating supply logistics, managing traffic flow and parking, providing up-to-the-minute weather risk data, as well as many other tasks that helped to make this event a successful and enjoyable one.
Most of the communications were handled on UHF/VHF simplex. It quickly became apparent that a remote parking area could not be covered on a simplex frequency. We also did not want to tie up our UHF repeater in case it was needed to handle emergency or priority traffic. Fred Schlesinger, WW2VEH quickly responded by setting up a cross-band repeater in a strategic location to provide this coverage.
We also took the opportunity to experiment and display. Mike Hoeft, K2MPH successfully experimented with APRS by tracking a golf cart as it traversed the Fair Grounds. Mike Mutaschio, KC2GMM successfully exercised a packet connection to the WA2SNA PBBS by using telnet over the satellite-internet system in the Command Post. John Demetrius, KC2OII and Joel Wagoner, N2IAG set up an HF station feeding an NVIS antenna outside the Command Post as an experiment. A station in a neighboring county was successfully contacted. Some of the problems needing attention while operating NVIS were identified in the process.
Many thanks go to George Sabbi, KC2GLG, and George Kennedy, N2AUR, both of SkyWarn, for providing continuous weather updates.
