Southern Arizona Region RACES Home Unit (HU)
The Southern Region RACES Home Unit (HU) group nominally covers all of Arizona's four Border Counties - Cochise, Pima, Santa Cruz and Yuma.
RACES Home Unit Members list - pdf file
The HU provides for those counties a highly reliable amateur radio HF/VHF simplex communications network which is completely independent of all external technologies and power sources. The HU network covers the four Border Counties' large expanse and mountainous terrain, without major coverage gaps and without relying on repeaters, phone lines, the internet, satellites or commercial electric power. It provides the Southern Region Emergency Operations Center (EOC) in Tucson -- and other Border County and Arizona State EOCs as necessary -- with up-to-the-hour community status reports and incident location information so that the EOCs can make best use of the available fire, law enforcement and public service agencies and their resources. This group, currently numbering 25 ham operators, has been active since October, 2005. It's intended for operators who prefer to provide public service emergency communications from their homes rather than engaging in other Southern Region RACES functions such as communicating among hospitals, interfacing numerous agencies' incompatible radio systems and supporting incident site and shelter field communications. Within their local communities, the HU stations can conduct informal nets with local RACES, ARES, or other non-member hams, over locally pre-designated VHF simplex frequencies. They can also interface over VHF simplex with hams embedded in, or members of, volunteer organizations such as the Neighborhood Watch, CERT and other Citizens' Council affiliated groups. They pass message traffic for these volunteers and collect community status information from them, including casualties, civil disturbances and local phone/gas/water/power utility status. Then they combine it and report it up to the appropriate EOC via HF. In this capacity, the HU stations and their affiliated community groups act as the EOC's "eyes and ears."
The HU has an HF net every Saturday morning at 0715 MST on 3863+ kHz. The group also runs occasional exercises and coverage tests of various bands from 160M to VHF and communication technologies ranging from CW to other digital modes including packet.
Required equipment are HF and VHF transceivers (at least an HT plus an rooftop VHF antenna); stand-by battery power; and virtually any HF antenna other than a vertical, since most of our hops are 100 miles or less.
For more information, contact Bill Hickey, AB7AA, Southern Region RACES Home Unit manager, bill.hickey@wildblue.net, 520-743-3934 (home), 808-778-8092 (cell), or in his absence, Bill Stanger, N2MZ, net manager, n2mz@arrl.net, 520-577-7300. Also, please see the HU’s web site, PC RACES Home Unit's Website.
