1. NBEMS for Emergency Communications
Dan N0PI, Scott ARES Asst. EC
Bob W0NFE, Scott ARES Asst EC
Narrow Band Emergency Messaging System

2. Accurate, Rapid Communications We all recognize these disasters
Ice storms, tornadoes and flooding are common disasters around here
The bridge collapse, devastating as it was, demonstrated the failings of cell phone service
Ham radio emergency communications get activated almost every year in the Fargo area during the flooding season
A few years back during major flooding in the Rochester area ham radio operators from the Twin Cities area were called upon to go down and help out with emergency communications
Accurate, Rapid
Communications

3. Agenda Why Digital ECOMS What is NBEMS
What NBEMS can and cannot do for you
Components of a NBEMS system
How to set up a NBEMS system
How to use NBEMS
Practice time
Here is an outline of what we’re going to try to cover this morning. Keep in mind that once you get started with fldigi or any digital communications package it will become an ongoing learning process
Practice, Practice, Practice

4. Why Digital ECOMS
Think back to your last public service event, drill, or deployment.
You probably passed a lot of traffic best suited for voice communications but...
What if you had been asked to pass
Roster of evacuees
Required prescription medications
Directions to a disaster scene
Voice communications are not going away
We may be asked to pass sensitive information from disaster sites which may include victim names, address, medication, etc.
Our transmissions cannot be encrypted and we know there are ambulance chasers or the media out there with scanners just trying to pick up tidbits of information
Digital communications is not encrypted but to the listening public it only sounds like noise. Refer to “Sights and Sounds . . .” tab at

5. Why Digital ECOMS The needs of our Served Agencies have changed.
They still need voice communications but...
There's an increasing need for data communications.
We need to be able to provide more than just voice communications from a ham with an HT.
Be sure to include digital capability with appropriate interfaces in your “Go Kit”

6. Agenda Why Digital ECOMS What is NBEMS
What NBEMS can and cannot do for you
Components of a NBEMS system
How to set up a NBEMS system
How to use NBEMS
Practice time

7. What is NBEMS Narrow Band Emergency Messaging System
Consists of four programs:
Fldigi – Fast Light Digital modem application
Flmsg – easily send ICS forms and Radiogram
Flwrap – Wrap a file with a checksum
Flarq – Fast Light Automatic Repeat Request
Can download from
Runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac.
Released under GNU Public License, so it is completely FREE.
Fldigi is the basic digital modem software
As a minimum you should plan on downloading fldigi , flmsg and flwrap
Flarg will be downloaded as part of the fldigi download. You probably won’t use it but should have it available
Flwrap, once installed, does not need to be opened because it works in the background
There are other pieces to this software suite that you might find useful once you become comfortable with the basic program
Some of the other pieces include rig control, net operations and logging software even though there is some logging capability built into the fldigi basic program
There is also other supporting calibration software out on the web that works with the fldigi program. We will discuss a sound card calibration procedure in a later foil.

8. NBEMS Homepage This is the homepage for w1hkj.com
It will give you the status of the different pieces of the fldigi suite of software
At the top of the page is the link to the actual download page
Probably the most important item on this page is the “Sights and Sounds of Digital Signals”
You can follow this link to a list of the operating modes you will find in fldigi. Clicking on each operating mode you will be able to see what that signal looks like in the waterfall pane of fldigi. You can also listen to what the signal will sound like in your speaker for that operating mode

9. NBEMS Download Page This is what the download pages looks like
The software is listed down the left side of the page and the operating system is listed across the top of the page
There are other pieces of this software suite that are also listed on this download page such as logging, net control and rig control but I don’t recommend that you play with them until you become familiar with the fldigi and flmsg basics
Note the “Help” column. These are great references to find out more details about the fldigi program

10. NBEMS philosophy Keep it cheap. Keep it simple.
Use Open Source software.
Don't depend upon infrastructure.
Make it fun to use between drills and disasters.
Any computer, any radio.
It’s free
Available for some of the different operating systems
Once installed, the fldigi software is very easy to use with many resources available to help you work with this mode of communications
There are more local groups adding fldigi capability to their nets
Scott County ARES
Sibley/LeSueur ARES
Rochester area ARES
The Southern Minnesota Phone-Digital Net
SEMARC Radio Club Net
There is more activity out East on both HF and VHF/UHF – Dave WB0KGN
Will work with any computer, radio and/or repeater system, unlike Dstar which is equipment specific

11. Using NBEMS in your net. Auxiliary method to handle formal traffic.
Voice used for basic check-in’s etc
Traffic passed by digital – Same or different channel
Much faster than Voice.
Number / letter sequences are 100% accurate.
All message are save to hard drive.
Bulletins broadcast to all station
All Digital net
Mix of keyboard to keyboard and formal traffic sent via forms.
Voice and digital can be used in conjunction with each other
Can be a more efficient and accurate way of moving formal traffic
No repetition required
No need for use of ITU phonetics for clarity
See more use of all digital mode on HF nets
Can use a mix of keyboard to keyboard communications with the use of standard ICS, HICS, MARS, IARU, ARRL Radiogram and Red Cross forms

12. Agenda Why Digital ECOMS What is NBEMS
What NBEMS can and cannot do for you
Components of a NBEMS system
How to set up you NBEMS system
How to Use NBEMS
Practice time

13. What NBEMS can do for you
Fast accurate method to provide
Keyboard to Keyboard communications
Send, save, and print standard ARRL, ICS, Red Cross, and generic forms (new forms added regularly)
Typical ARRL radiogram takes ~40 seconds to send
Data is verified via checksum
Can broadcast messages, one to many
Supports unattended reception of messages
Not encrypted, but general scanning public will hear noise.
Will work when voice is marginal.
We have covered some of this information in previous foils
Some key items from this foil are
Data verified via checksum
Supports unattended reception of messages but operator must make a point of reviewing the received messages folder once returning to station
Probably the most important feature is that digital communications may get through when voice communications are marginal at best

14. What NBEMS will not do for you
It is not a store and forward system like
Each station in the system must have an operator
Receive message will be stored on local hard drive.
No built in connection to the internet
It will not move large amounts of data
2 K bytes, or 1 type written page is a practical limit.
Over this size and likelihood of an error increases, causing a checksum failure. Have to resend message.
Flarq could handle larger files, up to 8K or more, but requires practice and more training to use.
Incoming messages will be automatically saved but an operator must forward the message on to another station
Larger messages are not recommended
If working through a repeater the time-out limits of the repeater must be kept in mind
Because of the forward error correction within flarg it is able to handle larger files but flarq requires quite a bit more in overhead time for passing messages and more training

15. Agenda Why Digital ECOMS What is NBEMS
What NBEMS can and cannot do for you
Components of a NBEMS system
How to set up you NBEMS system
How to Use NBEMS
Practice time

16. Components of NBEMS system
Flwrap
Flmsg
Flarq
Software on Computer
Fldigi
Sound Card Interface
Hardware connection Computer to Radio
This diagram shows the basic fldigi operating system
Once you become comfortable with this basic system you can expand it with some of the add-on feaatures we saw on the earlier download page foil
We will get into the individual blocks in future foils
Radio and Antenna

17. Components of NBEMS system Bottom Up - Radio
Any voice capable radio will work
FM, SSB, even AM if you want.
Fldigi will work with any voice capable radio
FM, SSB, or even AM
Also HF, UHF or VHF
We will cover interfacing in the next foil but I wanted to point out that with HF and the base/mobile station rigs you can interface with the radio via microphone inputs and an external speaker output or via the data port on the back of the radios
The handheld radio can be interfaced via the external microphone/speaker connector or via acoustic coupling (“cave man”) approach

18. Components of NBEMS system Bottom Up – Radio Interface
Signal Link USB – Just needs USB Port
Rig Blaster – USB and audio ports
March 2011 QST, Page 34 - Audio Ports Only
Anything hardwired is better, but
Audio coupling (Caveman) does work, and can be used.
The SignaLink USB by Tigertronics is probably the easiest interface to work with
You just need to either purchase the interface cable unique to your radio or build your own interface cables
I am using the SignaLink USB interface for this demonstration but I also have a West Mountain Rigblaster Plus interface
For the acoustic coupling your laptop will either need a built-in microphone or you will need to add an inexpensive external microphone
You will then need to manually perform the PTT function

19. Components of NBEMS system Bottom Up - Fldigi
I am not going to cover all the details of this software. The different features are well documented within the references available on the download page
Lets touch on just a few of the main items of the fldigi screen
The waterfall – Sights and Sounds
The transmit window – this is where you will type your outgoing messages in the keyboard to keyboard operation. If you pre-type a message watch where you leave the cursor
The receive window – Your incoming messages will show up in this screen. Because of the way I have my fldigi configured my transmit message is also shown in this screen
T/R button – also control T and control R
RxID and TxID boxes checked
Incoming signal strength meter – make sure the squelch level is set low <5%. Adjust by watching noise in the receive window
Op mode drop down tab
Configure drop down tab
Call, name, QTH, etc. are used for logging and with macro use
Macro buttons to speed up keyboard to keyboard communications - programmable

20. Components of NBEMS system Bottom Up - Fldigi
Provides the basic digital communications for the NBEMS system
Supports keyboard to keyboard communication like many sound card programs.
Has special hooks to connect to the other components.
Supports many modes of communications
We will focus on two, MT63-2K and Olivia 16/500
We’ve discussed some of these features in the previous screen review
From the download webpage you have seen some of the different programs you can tie into fldigi – flarq, logging and rig control to name a few
As you will see in a later foil there are many different operating modes this software can utilize. We are going to focus on the MT63-2K and Olivia 16/500 modes

21. Components of NBEMS system Bottom Up - Flmsg
Rapidly and Accurately formats and transmits information.
8 Formats
ICS Forms
HICS
MARS
IARU
Radiogram
Red Cross
Generic
Blank
This is the flmsg part of the fldigi suite
If you saw our presentation a few years ago you can see all of the new forms that have been added to this program – from four to now eight formats
Go through the acronyms
We’ll go deeper into this program in a few foils under configuring flmsg
For this presentation we will focus on the ICS213 form and the ARRL Radiogram form

22. Agenda Why Digital ECOMS What is NBEMS
What NBEMS can and cannot do for you
Components of a NBEMS system
How to set up a NBEMS system
How to use NBEMS
Practice time
Next we will cover the BASIC settings that will get you on the air with NBEMS.
Our goal is to configure the software to send and receive a message using MT63 – 2K using VHF.
Let’s get started.

23. Basic Fldigi Set-up Operating Mode MT63 – 2000 Olivia 16/500
If you have a decent FM voice channel start with MT
When MT fails, switch to Olivia 16/500
When Olivia fails, no communications.
Let’s get this software setup and start playing with digital communications
With a clean install of the newest revision most of the configuration is already taken care of but over the years we have gone through a learning process in getting this software configured properly
Let’s go through the configuration just as a reminder of some of the critical configurations. If you run into some configuration problems down the road this power point presentation will be available on our Scott ARES.org webpage under Member Resources
The Op Mode drop down tab is where you will set your operating mode to start your digital communications. This operating mode may change with an incoming signal if they are using a different mode and you have the RxID and TxID buttons turned on
With Scott ARES digital communications we spend most of our time on MT63-2K
Dave, WB0KGN, uses Olivia most of the time on HF

24. Configuration Options
Basic Set-up
Operator
Waterfall
Modems
Rig Control
Sound Card
IDs
Here are the different configuration steps we are going to cover

25. Operator Callsign Tactical Callsign Location
As determined by the situation.
First we need to identify who you are
You can provide as much or as little information as you want
This is a good area to use a tactical call sign if you are operating under that mode. You could put your name/FCC call sign under the Name block such as Bob/W0NFE
The QTH block could be used for your emergency site location such as EOC or Staging, Etc.
Once you change anything in this drop down window be sure to save your settings before exiting
Always SAVE!

26. Waterfall Check the three ‘cursor’ options
Check “Always show audio frequencies”
The three cursor options should be checked. Bandwidth, Centerline and Signal tracks
We recommend that you check the “Always show audio frequencies.” This will show up just above the waterfall with audio frequencies vs operating frequency numbers
I personally have the “Monitor transmitted signal” block checked. That way I see in the receive window what is being transmitted
Again, always save your settings before leaving this window
Always SAVE!

27. Modems - MT63 Check interleave and tone
All stations in the net need to have the top two button the same for this mode to work.
These buttons need to be checked
If both the transmitting station and the receiving station do not have these boxes checked you will not copy the transmitted MT63 signal
Again, always save before leaving this window
Always SAVE!

28. Sound Card Select the correct audio port for your computer.
Volume control on computer, recording controls
Select Mic option
Adjust for a ‘speckled’ waterfall
Speaker – adjust for transmit signal
This screen and the next screen are probably where you will run into the most difficulty configuring your fldigi software and computer interface
Making sure your software, computer and radio are talking to each other
Be sure the Port Audio is checked
On the Audio/Devices tab, make sure you have the correct Audio Port Playback and Capture programs specified
Using the SignaLink USB I need to select “USB Audio Codec.” (The external soundcard must be connected BEFORE fldigi is started.)
You need to make sure the audio levels are adjusted to levels that show activity on the waterfall and provide transmit audio to your radio
The process to set these levels will vary determined by your computer OS and interface. (On a Windows OS you might want to check the ‘Sounds and Audio Devices’ folder.)
Generally, you want to select a mic input and set the volume of that input to provide a blue speckled waterfall with the squelch open. The transmit audio is generated by the speaker setting. Adjust the volume to transmit an undistorted signal. Less volume is generally better than more.
Again, be sure to save your settings before leaving this window
Always SAVE!

29. Initialize and Save after changing
Rig Control
If using hardwire PTT
Check Use Serial Port
Select COM port
Configure RTS or DTS
Initialize to test operation
Depending on what soundcard interface you use will determine what buttons you will need to check
If you are using a hardwire PTT interface, check the Use separate serial port box, select the correct Com Port, and RTS or DTR as required by your particular interface
Using the SignaLink USB interface I don’t need to check any of these buttons
It was just a matter of finding out which Com Port the USB connection was using
Hit the Initialize button and then Save before leaving this window
After setting up this screen and the previous screen I recommend going to the fldigi screen and confirming that you see something in the waterfall and that when you activate the “T/R” button that your radio actually goes into the transmit mode, i.e., the software and computer are actually talking to your radio and vice versa
Initialize and Save after changing

30. IDs Reed-Solomon ID DO NOT select “Reception disables detector”
Pre-Signal Tone may vary depending on specific delay time in your equipment
Here is the ID configuration window you will need to check
We are concerned with the Reed-Solomon ID areas. In the Receive ID section, check the two boxes in the upper section: Detector searches entire passband, and Mark previous frequency and mode. DO NOT check Reception Disables Detection
You may need to play with the Pre-Signal Tone time depending on the delay time in your equipment. This may include adjusting the VOX delay time on your soundcard interface if it has a built-in VOX circuit and delay time is adjustable
Again, save before leaving this window
Always SAVE!

31. Text Capture Under configuration , Misc, NBEMS.
Make sure “Enable,” “Open Message Folder” and “Open with flmsg” is selected.
Verify flmsg file location
The reason for showing this drop down window is to make certain you have checked the NBEMS data file interface buttons to “Open with flmsg” under Reception of flmsg messages
We will demonstrate this in a few minutes
Another action item in this window will be to correct the path statement for the flmsg.exe. If you had an older version of fldigi/flmsg installed on your computer this path statement has not been updated with newer installations. You should also make certain you have removed older versions of flmsg on your computer. Upgrading does not remove older versions on your computer
Again, save before leaving this window
Always SAVE!

32. Flmsg Rapidly and Accurately formats and transmits information.
ICS Forms
HICS
MARS
Radiogram
Red Cross
Generic
DnD
Blank
You have seen this screen before but we will also need to configure flmsg before proceeding

33. Flmsg set-up Personal Data Date/Time format Files format Radiogram
Words per line (5)
Serial Number
These four drop down screens appear under the “Config” tab on flmsg
You will need to select the date and time format you want to use. It is important in an emergency operation to that everyone use the same format for Date, Time and message numbering
You will also need to select how you want your “Saved” files named. Be consistent with the entire emergency team
You will also need to identify yourself for the ARRL Radiogram form. Again, tactical call sign could be used and as much information you give is up to you
You also have the option of selecting how many words per line to use in the Radiogram form

34. Agenda Why Digital ECOMS What is NBEMS
What NBEMS can and cannot do for you
Components of a NBEMS system
How to set up a NBEMS system
How to use NBEMS
Practice time

35. Fldigi Verify communications with keyboard to keyboard
Ctrl-T to Transmit
Ctrl-R to Receive
We have covered this screen earlier but will demonstrate it’s use in the demo portion of this presentation
Or Use the T/R button

36. Flmsg Rapidly and Accurately formats and transmits information.
ICS Forms
HICS
MARS
Radiogram
Red Cross
Generic ( )
DnD
Blank
We have covered this screen earlier but will demonstrate it’s use in the demo portion of this presentation
Older versions of flmsg showed the different formats and form numbers as tabs and sub tabs
With version of flmsg the different formats and respective form numbers show-up under the Form drop down window

37. ICS 213 Form
Time
Here is the ICS213 general communications form. The fields match up with the multi-part paper form you will see in an emergency. Preparing the message is a fill-in-the-blank exercise. The Date and Time blanks may be filled in using the buttons for the current values
We will show you an ICS213 message in an upcoming foil
Date

38. ARRL Radiogram Calculate Check Today Pick ARRL Message
Here is the ARRL Radiogram form
You have a button on this form that will select the precedence for this piece of traffic
A button for selecting handling instructions, if used
A button that calculates the check sum for this piece of traffic after you have entered the message below
Date and time buttons
An ARL abbreviated code selector, if utilized
Again, we will show you a completed ARRL Radiogram form in an upcoming foil

39. WRAP your message Sending your message is easy as selecting: File Wrap
AutoSend
The message immediately moves to FLDIGI and is transmitted
Once you have filled out a form you are ready to send the traffic
Before sending the traffic check your fldigi screen for the correct operating mode
When ready to send hit File/Wrap/Autosend
A screen will pop up to ask you if you want a copy of the message saved before transmitting
These files will be saved in your flmsgsend folder

40. Received Traffic
Received messages are stored within the NBEMS.files folder
WRAP files are associated with flmsg for viewing
Messages sorted by date/time stamp

41. IC 213 HTML Delivery
You can ‘VIEW’ a received message in Flmsg in html delivery format. When the page is printed from your browser the form looks like a standard paper IC 213 message or ARRL Radiogram form

42. ARRL Radiogram Delivery

43. Agenda Why Digital ECOMS What is NBEMS
What NBEMS can and cannot do for you
Components of a NBEMS system
How to use a NBEMS
How to set up a NBEMS system
Practice time

44. Things to Watch Tx & Rx IDs Op Mode Squelch - off
Here are a couple of areas that may trip you up from time to time.
Check the upper right corner of the screen. Make sure the RX ID and TX ID are checked. This will utilize the Reed-Solomon ID
You can check the Op Mode in the lower left corner of the screen.
The squelch, set in the lower right corner of the screen must be set low enough to see the signal on the waterfall. If you set the squelch at the bottom, you may see some garbage print in the Receive Text area.

45. Sound Card Calibration
If you run the Sound Card Calibration program this is the fldigi window where you would plug in the correction factors gathered from the program
The Sound Card Calibration program is available at under Member Resources/NBEMS Resources/SCCheck
The procedure for this test is available as a Power Point presentation at the same location and listed as Sound Card Calibration

46. Additional Information
This presentation is available at from the Member Resources page.
Questions?