On Saturday, May 2nd, I attended the Orange County Red Cross May Day Emergency Communications event. Gordon West was the MC (who I got to meet). There were various ECOM agencies represented, including the Orange County Sheriff's RACES vehicle, the San Diego County RACES vehicle, Red Cross Vehicles, and Navy MARS (me!). I took some pictures of the various portable stations and vehicles to share with everyone here.
Just to brag for a minute, Gordon West wanted to see my setup of my Hi-Q 4-80 and 500 Watt amp with the radio, tnc, computer, etc. He closely inspected the amp and antenna installation and declared that it was one of the cleanest installs that he had ever seen. He's a really nice guy to everyone and I'm sure he was just being nice to me, too...but I'll take the compliment!
There were also a lot of new hams or people studying to be hams who had a lot of questions. They were teaching a ham radio license class there and took a few minutes to tour them around with all of the vehicles.
Gordon West showing his Red Cross vehicle
Gordon demonstrating his manually adustable Hi-Q antenna.
Break down 40 meter dipole. The aluminum mast breaks down into about 4' sections and is mounted on a tip over hitch mount. The whole thing took about 5 minutes to put up.
This is the company that makes the portable mast.
The dash of Gordon West's van.
Center console of Gordon West's van
Orange County's RACES vehicle.
Station one of the OC RACES vehicle. These radios are on the various police, fire, Red Cross, and other agencie's frequencies.
Second station inside the OC RACES vehicle.
San Diego county has a RACES trailer. Here's the side window that opens up to view inside.
San Diego RACES station.
Another view inside the San Diego RACES trailer
This is a portable
HF/VHF/
UHF Land Rover station. Mounted on the rear is a 20' telescoping mast with a huge 440Mhz yagi.
Here's the rotor for the 440Mhz yagi on the Land Rover. It is built to quick disconnect in a manner of minutes.
Here's the 440Mhz yagi in the Land Rover. This guy said he had talked to Arizona from California with this thing.
Inside the Land Rover station
100 Watt amplifier helps out the 440 station.
Front view of the Land Rover station
Yaesu
FT-897D with autotuner attached to an end fed dipole that is attached just below the 440Mhz yagi.
A portable VHF/
UHF station. This was a very clean setup that was able to be set up and taken down quickly.
Here's the box that everything fits in for that portable station.
This is just a collection of things to consider bringing or having prepared for a portable ECOM station.
Another Red Cross portable station
Don't forget something to sleep on if you're planning on being deployed.
This is portble station for fire/police/amateur that has mostly "soccer moms" for members.
This is a group that supports the local hospitals in the event of a communications disruption or power outage. They have an interesting problem because they are dealing with trying to talk through buildings that often have below ground floors and walls made of lots of steel and concrete while trying to support nurses and doctors.
Various handhelds and antenna solutions
Here's an interesting and cheap way to mount a duck antenna if you want to set it on top of something for more height.
Simple way to make your VHF/
UHF radio portable: Bend a book end and get a battery charger.
Here's a mountain top linked repeater system that this guy brought down to show off.
Close-up of the repeater with diagram. It's comletely remote controllable (of course) and links to several other repeaters. He also had other cards for other bands that could be inserted, if desired.
That's all the pictures I got. I forgot to take some of my own Navy-MARS Auxilliary Response Team (ART) vehicle, which is my Jeep. It was worth going to the event just to see some of the other vehicles and get ideas.
2009 Orange County Red Cross May Day ECOM event pics 
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