July 22, 2026 Meeting Agenda
This is just a reminder that the July meeting of Salt Lake County ARES is this evening, 1900 MDT in our new meeting place. The Intermountain Health Employee Services Center is centrally located at 5245 College Drive (480 West) in Murray.
Find it in Google Maps at this link. On the agenda this evening:
- Final after-action discussion, Pony Express Reride
- Reports from ARRL Field Day
- Update on Intermountain/ARES access badge test program
- Introduction to In-Band Signalling
In-band signalling is a term which refers to status or telemetry data transmitted as audio in the same channel as analog voice. It includes familiar forms such as CTCSS, DCS and DTMF (“touch tone”) signalling, but also encompasses several other technologies. Repeater courtesy beeps sometimes carry telemetry signals designed to be decoded by ear. Many of the most inexpensive, basic radios popular with hams today still support paging protocols which are seldom used today, but may have useful applications for us.
The idea to explore this topic arose during Pony Express. We had hams camping in remote areas without cell coverage, wanting to get as much sleep as possible before starting a shift as net control or a mobile on the trail. With the pony as much as two hours off-schedule, paging tones could have allowed a receiver to be set to remain muted until net control sent a specific tone sequence to provide a wake-up call.
One issue we face in serving hospitals or Salt Lake County EM is a scenario in which phones and internet are down, leaving our partners with a need for our help, but with no way to notify ARES members. Would you be willing to leave a radio on at home 24/7, muted, waiting for specific paging tones, so we could have a sort of “Bat Signal” to activate if needed? Let’s talk about that idea tonight.
I don’t yet have confirmation of a MicroSoft Teams link for joining our meeting online at the new location. If I can get that resolved before the meeting, I’ll post it as a reply to this post on our email group, so watch for an update in your inbox this afternoon.
We’ll look for you in Classroom 3! Doors should be open by 1830. Thanks for being a part of Salt Lake County ARES.