As many of you know, OMMRS is a large organization with many committees and meetings. Two committees impact us, as hams, most. Those are the Communications Committee and the Communications Recruiting and Training Committee.

Communications is important in any disaster and amateur radio is a key player with the OMMRS response plan, so much so that there are more than 20 sites, spread over 7 counties that cross 2 states that have been equipped with amateur radio equipment. That is a great accomplishment and also a bit of a nightmare from an inventory and maintenance stand point. It took the Communications Recruiting and Training committee over 2 years to vsit each site and inventory and check the equipment.

So out of that was born the idea to tap the volunteers that make up the amateur radio community that serves OMMRS. And so the Stewardship Program was born.

The idea is to spread the work, increase while increasing the visits and also the site staff awareness of amateur radio. Each Steward will be assigned an OMMRS site which are made up of

• Hospitals
• County health departments
• Poison center
• Red Cross Blood Services

to make regular visits that will

• exercise and inspect the equipment,
• make software updates,
• add and remove pages and supplies from the “site books”.
• document the storage location of the equipment
• note any additional items that are needed
• make sure that the station is ready all the time.

Each Steward will be given a contact name for their assigned OMMRS site, and will make a mutually agreeable time for the Steward to make the inspection. Each visit will take about an hour from set up to pack up, but might be a bit longer or shorter depending on the location. (Some stations are up all the time, others might need to be located)

We need your help to make this work.
Please sign up now as orientation will be held soon. If you have not signed up, Click this link to the OMMRS Steward Form complete the form.