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Sheriff's Tactical Amateur Radio Communications Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office (Underlined text and phrases are links)
The next STARC Meeting will be held at 1930 hours on Monday July 29th, at District III office - 7202 Gunn Highway, Tampa. The next STARC VE testing session will be Saturday, July 18, 2009 at District II. VE sessions are held at 9 AM on the third Saturday each month unless otherwise announced. The test session will be held in the break room on the south side of the FRW Complex. STARC has a new address. STARC, P.O. Box 4128, Brandon, FL 33509-4128. Please send any written correspondence for the club to that address. 2009 STARC Officers
Page Contents The Sheriff's Tactical Amateur Radio Communications (STARC) was founded in August 1999 and formally adopted a constitution and by-laws on February 26th 2001. The purpose of the organization is to provide the following services, in the event of a natural or man-made disaster:
Members of STARC are employees of various Hillsborough County Government agencies, Verizon Telephone, Tampa Electric, St. Joseph's Hospital, Tampa Police Department, and other public and private agencies. In the event of a disaster, radio operators will provide communications between participating agencies if normal means of communications are lost. Special two-way amateur radio equipment is installed in all major facilities of the Sheriff's Office to provide for this capability. DSTAR is the new digital mode from Icom. Interest in this mode is growing with repeaters going online in many locations across the country including Lakeland, Orlando and Town & Country. D-Star Information links:
Click
here for more information on DSTAR
Click here for information on VE testing 
 Search for exam
sessions
Practice
Exams
STARC has conducted several amateur radio theory and Morse Code classes that have helped many people become licensed amateur operators or upgrade their operating privileges. One was in November and December 2006 with five participants completing their requirements to become amateur radio operators. With the elimination of the code requirement on February 23, 2007, there are now three classes of amateur radio license issued by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). They are Technician, General, and Amateur Extra. Each class of license gives more privileges and wider operating frequencies in exchange for successful completion of a more difficult examination. A General license upgrade class started March 5th, 2007. An Amateur Extra class was completed December 2007. Click here for information on Amateur Radio Classes
STARC currently operates three amateur radio repeaters in the Tampa Bay area. The first repeater is a wide area UHF machine that covers a five county area in West Central Florida. The repeater is located in downtown Tampa at an elevation of almost 400 feet above ground level. It operates on a frequency of 444.900 Mhz with a sub-audible access tone of 141.3 hz. There is also a hot back up for this repeater located at the Taylor Road site using a tone of 162.2 for use in the event the main repeater is not working. The second repeater is a two meter machine in Seffner on a frequency of 146.610 Mhz. This repeater also uses a 141.3 sub-audible access tone. Both repeaters have standard offsets for their frequency and band, +500 for 440 and -600 for two meters. A six meter repeater provided for use by a member of STARC is located at Hillsborough County Fire Station 11. The repeater output is on 51.64 Mhz with an input of 51.14 Mhz with no sub audible tone at this time.
An information net is held on the 444.900 repeater every Tuesday at 1930 local time (show/print preamble). All licensed amateurs are invited to check into the net.
On the first Thursday of each month the
Hillsborough Emergency Amateur Radio Services (HEARS) net is conducted on the 444.900 repeater at 0930 local time
(show/print
preamble). This net is primarily for
public services including Utilities, Hospitals and Law Enforcement agencies to
check their equipment, however all licensed amateurs are invited to check into
the net. Please provide your Name and Location when checking in. Use the following links for
online NIMS training. This training is now required for Hillsborough County
ARES/RACES and the Homeland Security Office of the Hillsborough County Sheriff's
Office.
http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IS/is100.asp
Introduction
to Incident Command System
http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IS/is200.asp
ICS for Single Resources and Initial Action Incidents
http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IS/is700.asp
National Incident Management System (NIMS), An Introduction
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