Winlink Thursdays: How Do They Work?
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Step One: Find your Clearinghouse Tactical Winlink Address here... |
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Step Two: This Week's Winlink Thursday assignment: |
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[to find pre-2023 Winlink Thursdays, and their results, click here]
Exercise Schedule: August thru December 2023: |
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Date | Form | Note |
August 24th, 2023 | ICS-205 Re-Do | Results of "Operation Clear Fog" Re-Do |
Postponed until December | ICS-213RR | Resource Request Form |
October 5, 2023 | Winlink Check In Form | Instructions Results |
October 19, 2023 | USGS "Did You Feel It?" Report | non-ETO: Great American Shake Out. |
November 11, 2023 | ICS-213 RR Message Form | Semi-Annual Drill |
December 14, 2023 | Holiday Surprise | Start making your wish list for Christmas / the Holidays. |
[Click on a ▶ link, to expand its contents]
General Notes on Frequently-Seen Mistakes... Please Read!:
General Notes:We see many of the same mistakes being repeated week
after week, across different exercise types, so we think it’s worthwhile to call these out.
Sending incorrect longitude and latitude dataWe use the latitude and longitude data to plot you onto maps. Sometimes that map data
is obviously incorrect. This occurs when folks in the Western Hemisphere omit the minus sign in front of
longitude or when folks in the Southern Hemisphere omit the minus sign in front of latitude.
The use of a GPS dongle helps to mitigate against this. If you’re not using a GPS dongle,
do take extra care in copying/pasting or entering those numbers
Incorrect format when answering a multiple choice questionWhen we ask a multiple choice question on a Winlink Check In message, we require the
answer to be in a specific format: a single character, uppercase letter on the first line of the Comments field.
We don’t want any punctuation before or after that single letter. We don’t want an explanation.
We just want a single letter.
Here’s a partial list of answers that we consider “not valid”:
Not sending to an ETO clearinghouseWe use a group of volunteers to act as the “Clearinghouses” for most exercises.
The purpose of the Clearinghouses is to divide the work that we do to process your messages. Each Clearinghouse
has a specific Winlink tactical address: ETO-01 through ETO-10 (corresponding to USA FEMA regions), plus ETO-DX
for non-US participants and ETO-CAN for Canada.
If you don’t address your message to one of these tactical addresses, we won’t receive
your message.
Even though some Winlink Templates, such as the Winlink Check In, allow you to address
your message directly from the message itself, we strongly discourage this. Instead, we would strongly encourage
you to create a Winlink “contact” for your clearinghouse.
Then, after you hit the [Submit] button on the template, click on the [To:] button and
select your clearinghouse contact.
Yes, it’s a bit more work to set up, but once you have it correctly set up, you will not
make an accidental mistake by entering “ETO-1”, or “ETO-O1” ( with a letter "O" next to the "1" ) when you meant
to enter “ETO-01” ("eee-tee-ohh-dash-zero-one").
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October 19th:
"Did You Feel It?" Report, for the Great American ShakeOut
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10/10/2023: Results for October 5th Winlink Check-In Form exercise |
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Results Map for October 5th, 2023, Winlink Check-In Form exercise |
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"How do I find my Check-In on the Map?"
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[Click on the ▶ or the line of text above, to expand its contents]
October 5th: Winlink Thursday: Winlink Check-In Form, Version 5
All,
We have decided to reschedule the ICS-213RR exercise for 9/14/2023 to December 14th.
Some of our key people in ETO are deployed with their respective disaster response organizations and are not available to support this week’s exercise. Also many of participants are either deployed on Wildfire responses or are on standby for possible impacts from hurricane Lee. Responding to actual disasters has to take priority over exercises.
We will continue on as planned with the exercises for October.
Regards,
The ETO Team
8/30/2023: Results for August 24th "Re-Do" of "Operation Clear Fog" 8/10 Exercise: |
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Results Map for August 24th, 2023, Re-Do by Clearinghouse |
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"How do I find my Check-In on the Map?"
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[Click on the ▶ or the line of text above, to expand its contents]
NEW! as of 8/24/2023: Re-Calculated Results for August 10th "Operation Clear Fog" ICS-205 Exercise: |
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New! Results Map 2.0 for August 10th, 2023 |
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[Click on the ▶ or the line of text above, to expand its contents]
Winlink Thursday "Operation Clear Fog" ICS-205 Re-Do for August 24th, 2023
Results for July 27th "Severe Weather Report" Re-Do Exercise: |
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7/27/2023 "Severe Weather Report" Re-Do Exercise: Results Map |
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7/27/2023 "Severe Weather Report" Re-Do Exercise: Both 7/13 and 7/27 for Participants of Both WLT's |
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The link below displays the grading key that was used to grade the exercise. You can compare your message to the table to determine which fields you may have missed. Grading Summary for 7/27/2023, Version 1.0 |
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[Click on the ▶ or the line of text above, to expand its contents]
Re-Do: Winlink Thursday for July 27th, 2023
Results for July 13th "Severe Weather Report": |
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7/13/2023 "Severe Weather Report": Results Map |
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The link below displays the grading key that was used to grade the exercise. You can compare your message to the table to determine which fields you may have missed. Grading Summary for 7/13/2023, Version 1.2 |
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[Click on the ▶ or the line of text above, to expand its contents]
Winlink Thursday for July 13th, 2023
Results for June 15th "Check-In Form": |
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6/15/2023 "Check-In Form": Results Map |
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We didn’t reject any messages so the sender can see what the issues were so they can correct it next time.
The table below contains the grading key that was used to grade the exercise. You can compare your message to the table to determine which fields you may have missed.
Note 1: The comment field was worth 50% of the grade Note 2: Some participants of ETO-09 may not have been graded due to a technical issue with the ETO-09 Computer. If you are missing from the map, you can resubmit your message to ETO-BK.Note 3: If your location is incorrect please send a winlink message to K7ZPJ. |
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Winlink Thursday for June 15th, 2023
Results for April 13th "Weather Report": |
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4/13/2023 "Local Weather Report": Results Map |
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The table below contains the grading key that was used to grade the exercise.
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Field Name | Grading Criteria | |
Observer Name: | Filled In | |
DateTime: | Filled In | |
Location: | Filled In | |
LAT: | Filled In | |
LON: | Filled In | |
City: | Filled In | |
County: | Filled In | |
State | Filled In | |
Current Conditions | Filled In | |
Temperature | Filled In | |
Wind Speed: | Number & Estimated selected | |
Notes: | Filled In | |
Breakdown of Errors by Message Field | ||
Field | Number of Messages With Errors | Percent of Messages With Errors |
Wind Speed: | 87 | 15.62% |
Location: | 74 | 13.29% |
Notes: | 31 | 5.57% |
State | 12 | 2.15% |
Current Conditions | 12 | 2.15% |
County: | 9 | 1.62% | City: | 3 | 0.54% |
Example of Completed Local Weather Report |
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If you have questions please send email to: ETO.Technical.Team@EmComm-Training.groups.io
Regards,
The ETO team
"How do I find my Check-In on the Map?"
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[Click on the ▶ or the line of text above, to expand its contents]
Please send any questions about the Winlink Thursdays to: ETO.Technical.Team@EmComm-Training.groups.io
Please send any questions about our group on groups.io to: main+owner@EmComm-Training.groups.io
73's from the EmComm Training Team
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Find YOUR Region's Clearinghouse Tactical Address HERE... |