Download the Allen County SKYWARN net operations manual.
Many members of the Fort Wayne Radio Club participate in the National Weather Service (NWS) SKYWARN® program. The members serve as volunteer storm spotters, using their radios to relay reports of certain severe weather phenomena to the Northern Indiana NWS weather forecast office (WFO) near North Webster.
During periods of severe weather, the Allen County, Indiana SKYWARN ham radio net (formerly known as the IMO SKYWARN Quadrant Two Net) meets on the ACARTS 146.88 MHz repeater. The FWRC 146.76 MHz repeater serves as an alternate, should the 146.88 repeater be unavailable. Because of the wide coverage area of the Fort Wayne repeaters, spotters from locations outside Allen County, Indiana are welcome to use the Allen County SKYWARN net to relay their reports to the Northern Indiana WFO.
The net has two modes: Standby (watch) mode and Directed Net (warning) mode.
For more detailed information, see the operations manual for the Allen County SKYWARN net.
Below is additional information and news about SKYWARN operations.
Library expands meeting space to accommodate weather enthusiasts
Strong pre-registrations for a free class on how to recognize and report severe weather phenomena led a local organization to add meeting space to accommodate more people. The Allen County branch of the national Amateur Radio Emergency Service® (ARES) will host the class at the Allen County Public Library, 900 Library Plaza, Fort Wayne, Thursday, Feb. 21 at 6:30 p.m. By Feb. 12, only nine seats were still available, so the library agreed to expand the meeting space, adding 30 seats.
Scheduled speakers include meteorologists from ABC21, Fort Wayne’s NBC, Fox 55 and WANE 15. Allen County Office of Homeland Security director Bernie Beier and Consolidated Communications Partnership deputy director John Chavez also plan to speak.
The class is free and open to the general public, but because fewer than 40 seats are still available, Allen County ARES requests all who plan to attend, to register in advance at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/allen-county-storm-spotter-education-tickets-54685721465
The amateur radio SKYWARN net based in Fort Wayne will undergo slight changes, effective Feb 1, 2017. Formerly known as the IMO SKYWARN Quadrant Two Net, it will now be referred to as the Allen County SKYWARN Net. The net will continue, however, to accept and relay reports from spotters outside Allen County, including stations in places like DeKalb and Defiance County, which were not officially part of the former quadrant net’s responsibility.
The de facto demise of the IMO SKYWARN organization led to the change. IMO SKYWARN’s fade from existence was symbolized by the recent disappearance of the organization’s website and further indicated by its board’s lack of activity for the past few years (a conference call in 2012 was the board’s most recent meeting).
IMO SKYWARN originally formed to implement an organized system to get reports from trained SKYWARN storm spotters to the Northern Indiana National Weather Service office via amateur radio. That system continues to exist. An amateur radio station at the NWS office (WX9IWX) can still simultaneously monitor four repeaters, including one in Fort Wayne, although recent difficulty staffing WX9IWX with volunteer hams has hampered the system. IMO SKYWARN also organized biennial advanced spotter training seminars in the past, but has not produced such an event since 2011.
Amateur radio continues to be an important resource to the NWS SKYWARN program as evidenced by a memorandum of understanding between the ARRL and the NWS. Spotter reports to many local ham radio nets, however, no longer travel all the way to the NWS via amateur radio. Instead, many local nets send their reports to the NWS via a private NWS internet chatroom known as NWSChat. In fact, our local net has used that method during several activations when WX9IWX was not on the air, including the August 24, 2016 tornado outbreak. Despite the popularity of NWSChat, the leadership of the Allen County SKYWARN Net intend for the net to remain a viable alternative in the event of internet failure, assuming WX9IWX can be staffed at such times.
Speaking of net leadership, it remains in the hands of the same people, with former IMO SKYWARN quadrant director Jay Farlow, W9LW, continuing the functional role of net manager, and the following experienced hams continuing as designated net control station (NCS) operators:
The net continues to seek additional NCS’s. Contact Farlow at the email address below for more information.
Other than the net name, the only change operators might notice is that the net repeater might enter “standby mode” less often. As a quadrant net, it entered standby mode for any severe thunderstorm watch or tornado watch that affected any of the 11 counties in its quadrant, if an NCS was available. NCS’s will continue to have discretion about when to enter standby mode, but revised net procedures will no longer require standby mode for watches that do not include Allen County. To repeat, however, the net will continue to accept reports from any station that can reach the net repeater, regardless of location. And spotter traffic from a nearby county may continue to prompt a directed net, even if severe weather isn’t threatening Allen County.
Anyone who’d like to see details of how the net will now operate may download an updated net operations manual from the FWRC website. Persons with questions about the net are encouraged to direct them to Farlow, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
A tornado outbreak occurred in Indiana and Ohio August 24, 2016. Storms did considerable damage in several of the 11 counties covered by the IMO SKYWARN quadrant two net on the Allen County Amateur Radio Technical Society 146.88 MHz repeater in Fort Wayne. Below is a log of the net's operations that day.
All Times EDT
1510 Began standby mode operation on IMO SKYWARN quadrant two ham radio frequency.
1713 K9RFZ reports 6 inches of standing water in Fort Wayne on Washington Center Road, east of N. Clinton St.
1714 Invoked directed net due to tornado warning in northeastern Allen County, Indiana (During a directed net, all stations remain off the air unless they have severe weather to report.)
1723 W9SAN confirms wall cloud, I-469 at State Road 37.
1729 KC9CGN confirms tornado, near intersection of Doty Rd. and Ricker Rd.
Four Fort Wayne amateur radio operators who are also volunteer storm spotters in the National Weather Service (NWS) SKYWARN program spent several hours April 11 assisting residents with their NOAA Weather Radio (NWR) receivers.
Al Burke (WB9SSE), Steve Haxby (N9MEL), Howard Pletcher (N9ADS), and Jay Farlow (W9LW) worked alongside representatives of WANE TV, the Alllen County Office of Homeland Security, the National Weather Service and the Midland Radio Corporation at the Walgreens store on Stellhorn Road to configure NWR receivers.
The volunteers assured that the receivers' specific area message encoding (SAME) and receive frequency settings were correct, so users would receive warnings that the NWS issues for their home counties.
WANE TV had promoted the three-hour event, which was duplciated at other locations in the TV station's market area. The Walgreens store sold nearly 100 near NWR receivers during the event, which volunteers configured. Volunteers also assited other visitors who brought in their own equipment, some of which was not SAME-capable (and at least one of which was not even a receiver!).
More photos of the event are available in this website's photo gallery.
The Fort Wayne Radio Club will be provide a special event station at the Northern Indiana National Weather Service (NWS) Office (KIWX), near North Webster, Ind. for SKYWARN Recognition Day.
The goal of the activation is to contact as many of the other NWS Offices as possible between the times of 1900 Local, December 4, 2015 (0000 UTC. December 5) and 1900 Local, Dec 5, 2015 (2400 UTC, December 5, 2015).
The FWRC is inviting all amateurs in the KIWX County Warning Area (lightly shaded counties on map at right) to participate in this event.
Please share this information with your teams and the radio clubs in your county and adjacent counties.
It is important to note that all amateurs who wish to participate in the event must pre-register with their desired times to operate.
Although it might have been possible in past years to "drop in" unexpected at the NWS office during the SKYWARN Recognition Day operations, current NWS policy prohibits access to the NWS facility by any operator who has not pre-registered. This is NWS policy over which FWRC has no control.
More information is available in a PDF file, a link to which appears below.
Any operator can pre-register by contacting me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Please put "SRD" or "SKYWARN Recognition Day" in the subject line of your message.
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The Allen County (Ind.) Office of Homeland Security has published an 8.5 x 11 inch flyer as a PDF file that announces the date and location of SKYWARN storm spotter training scheduled for Feb. 16, 2016. You can download your own copy of the flyer using the link below.
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Update: The ACOHS has announced that the Allen County, Indiana training will take place in the auditorium of the Public Safety Academy of Northeastern Indiana, 7602 Patriot Crossing, Fort Wayne, Indiana
The northern Indiana office of the National Weather Service and the Allen County (Ind.) Office of Homeland Security have scheduled annual volunteer SKYWARN storm spotter training for 7 p.m. Tuesday, February 16, 2016.
The NWS office is also scheduling the training in other counties in its county warning area. The full list, when available, will eventually appear somewhere on the office's website.