Last edited April 1993Introduction This is the SVECS Handbook. SVECS is the Silicon Valley Emergency Communications System, an amateur radio organization.
The Handbook is not Copyrighted, but some of its articles may be. You have permission to copy the entire Handbook as a way to make additional copies of the entire Handbook. In most cases, you may also copy or republish an individual article as is, or as edited to suit your needs, provided you give credit to the SVECS Handbook as the source. (The editor will provide computer files on request.) However, some articles may have republication restrictions marked on them; please respect these restrictions.
The Handbook contains a selection of important reference and training information for radio amateurs preparing for emergency service, and is edited by Dick Rawson, N6CMJ. It is a reference source for you to use when responding to an emergency assignment, and when preparing ahead of time for emergencies.
We intend to revise the Handbook yearly, to add new material, and to bring what we already have up-to-date. Whenever you notice errors or omissions, please tell the editor about them. We try to issue a revised edition in time for the January SVECS breakfast. To make that deadline, the editor needs to receive new or changed information by the preceding Christmas.
The Handbook is organized to make it easy to replace an individual article with a new version of the same article. The pages of each article are numbered independently of the other articles; each article starts with page one. Also, each article has a 3-part number, such as 2.1.3. Articles appear in the Handbook in sequence by this number. The example represents division 2, section 1, article 3. This method makes it easier to add new articles and remove obsolete articles without reorganizing or renumbering the Handbook.
Each article has a version number and a revision date. These appear at the bottom of each page near the page number, and the revision date is also at the start of the article.
The revision date refers to the article's factual content. Even if the article was reformatted for this Handbook, it still shows the earlier date of the material it was adapted from, unless the facts have been materially updated.
Articles, illustrations, maps, forms, etc., come from various sources, so appearance varies from article to article throughout the book.
Note that several articles were moved (and so assigned different numbers). The articles that change most often are now grouped together in Chapter 1.3.
return to Table of Contents
Comments and corrections should be addressed to the Webmaster