WxAlerts is not affiliated with the National Weather Service. This training is informational and does not confer NWS Trained Spotter status. Official SKYWARN certification is issued by your local NWS forecast office.

Module 10

Communications

Module 7 taught you what to say. This is about the pipe it travels down: every channel into a forecast office, what your words become at the other end, how a directed net works, where the emergency manager sits, and what to do on the day the cell network is not there.

Start lesson 01

Lessons6

Reading timeabout 3 hrs

Objectives24

The lessons

Take them in order, or don't

01Every way inA report is only useful if it arrives in time and attributable. Nine ways in, each trading speed against richness against reliability.Comms detailMost courses name two channels. This names nine, says what each one is good and bad at, and corrects the two things almost everybody believes about the list.30 min 02What your report becomesThe source field is a credibility ranking, it has thirty-one values, and two of the things people assume are on the list are not.Comms detailModule 7 followed your report through five stages. This opens the product at the other end and shows you the field that decides how much it is believed.28 min 03Amateur radio, and the license you do not needThree license classes, four rules that actually matter, the unlicensed alternatives, and the fact this whole lesson is optional.Comms detailThe lesson that corrects the single most persistent piece of lore in spotting, and then teaches the subject properly anyway.30 min 04On the netDirected nets, how to check in, how to break in when it matters, and why every relay makes a report slightly worse.Comms detailModule 7 gave you the report. This gives you the thirty seconds of procedure around it that decides whether anybody can use what you said.28 min 05The emergency manager, and who owns the sirensWhat an emergency operations center is, how your report reaches it, and the answer to why the sirens did not sound.Comms detailThe half of the warning system that is not the Weather Service, and the question every spotter eventually gets asked at a barbecue.30 min 06When the network failsCellular fails in severe weather, and there is data. A four-layer plan, a kit, and the sentence about when not to use this app.Comms detailThe lesson with real outage numbers in it, and the one that tells you plainly what this platform is not for.30 min

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