SET(Simulated Emergency Traffic) Exercise Conducted
in Kerala on 26.04.2009 - A report

The SET(Simulated Emergency Traffic ) went well. I feel we could have done better with better preparation.

We decided only non the type of emergency (Earthquake) and left the rest to VU3ULL OM Shaji and VU2OJ OM Abraham to be at their creative best and they seem to have done well. It would have been nice if we had officials along as that could have assured of real time official communications as in a real case.

The Table top (Sitting in shack and simulating)SET was planned for 11.05 Hrs and started on schedule by ULL sounding the alarm. The resource net was handled by VU2KGB OM Girish efficiently and supported by VU2RDN OM Ravi and VU2ADV OM Jacob.

Nobody was let into the secret on what emergency would arise and how stations should respond. All that was left to the stations to decide. They were assigned tactical callsigns based on their proximity to critical locations.

We had stations from all across kerala most of them on RF link to VU2BCM repeater and some on echo link. We had three stations from Delhi,VU3FUN OM Rajesh, VU2XLZ OM Frank and VU3GTF OM Karan, standing in for the National Disaster Management Authority.

We had a station at Trivandrum VU2JQX OM Anil for the state Disaster Management Authority. We had stations operating from all District Head quarters designated as the collectorate, Hospital and Police control Rooms. We had a station exclusively standing by for co ordination with railways at the DRM office at Palakad VU2 PJP OM Peter.

There was parallel operations in all districts on local repeaters and simplex frequencies. The traffic was sorted out locally and passed on to the SET net on 145.650 VU2BCM repeater.

There were stations standing by in tamil nadu to handle any possible welfare traffic. Even though the traffic handled was not the kind that we will have to handle in an emergency, large volume of traffic was handled. We could not generate large text messages for transmission which would have tested our effectiveness.

The SET was wound up after 1.5 Hrs as there was a possibility of panic amongst public. We had stations from bangalore calling up on phone regarding any calamity and thought it right time before any unfortunate development.

Wish to thank all stations for the Co operation.

73's

VU2ADV Jacob Elias

Please Note: That the following recordings are representation of a imaginary simulation of a disaster scenario.The objective of this mock simulation is for making awareness among HAM community on emergency traffic handling and do not serve the purpose of education or training on emergency traffic handling, therefore these recording should not be used as representation of actual emergency traffic handling by HAMS.

Listen to the Live Recordings for the SET exercise on 26.04.2009 : By IndiaHamS.com

Click on the Green Color Play Button below to listen to the files (In mp3 format)

File-1

File-2

File-3

File-4

File-5

File-6