East Iowa Cadet Squadron
Communications

The Civil Air Patrol operates one of the largest communications systems in the country with more than 6,000 fixed land stations and more than 10,000 land and airmobile radios operated by over 20,000 trained communicators. This system consists of voice and automatic digital communications capabilities on long and short circuit paths. Hundreds of individual networks are linked together to form a highly flexible and survivable nationwide traffic handling system.

The CAP National Digital Radio Network has drawn particular interest from other organizations such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency which has joined the network and included it in their emergency communications planning. The NDRN consists of more than 2,000 computer based radio stations which take advantage of leading edge technology to automatically establish links as necessary and pass error-free message traffic throughout the system. Because the system doesn't rely on telephone lines, it is highly survivable in the event of natural or man-made disasters and--also because of its radio-based architecture--it is extremely flexible allowing end-users to "plug" into the system from anywhere within radio range of one of the 500-plus system nodes across the country.

East Iowa Cadet Squadron is one on the leading communications supporters in the Iowa Wing. Lieutenant Colonel Mercer Richardson, is the Iowa Wing Director of Communications (Iowa CAP 4) and Cadet Lieutenant Colonel Doug Jansen is currently the only cadet qualified as a Communications Unit Director in the Iowa Wing.

We have a CAP repeater in Marion on standard CAP frequencies. We also have two digipeaters (IA00043 and IA00027) in Cedar Rapids. East Iowa hosts three local VHF nets every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights at 2100 hours on the repeater. We also host the Iowa Wing HF net on Thursday nights.

East Iowa Communicators:

NAME	CALLSIGN	AMATEUR RADIO CALLSIGN
SENIORS:
Curry, Joe	IOWA CAP 117
Glasgow, Rex	IOWA CAP 180	KD0WHH
Krenz, Mike	IOWA CAP 53	N0LNG
Prochaska, Steve	IOWA CAP 73	N0QGC
Richardson, Lesley	IOWA CAP 175	N0LGK
Richardson, Mercer	IOWA CAP 4 and IOWA CAP 176	K0VIF
Scott, Cynthia	IOWA CAP 178
Scott, Mike	IOWA CAP 46
Spitzer, Terry	IOWA CAP 181
Tindal, Doug	IOWA CAP 71
CADETS:
Benson, Brian	IOWA CAP 143
Brennan, Mike	IOWA CAP 145	KC0DXN
Brown, Sam	IOWA CAP 171	KB0UUI
Hansel, Robby	IOWA CAP 187
Inglis, Beth	IOWA CAP 147
Jansen, Doug	IOWA CAP 173	KB0UUJ
Pospischil, Nick	IOWA CAP 183
Thacker, Caleb	IOWA CAP 182