AREC is the public service arm of Amateur Radio. Many hams get involved in providing communications for sporting events, Search and Rescue and Civil Defence at different levels.
The Amateur Radio Emergency Communications organisation (AREC) was formed by the New Zealand Association of Radio Transmitters (Inc) (NZART) in 1932 after the Napier earthquake to train licensed amateur radio operators in providing reliable communications over the length of the country for any type of emergency. Full encouragement was given by the then New Zealand Post and Telegraph Department and they made available special station identifiers for emergency communications on the amateur radio allocated bands. It has become accepted among Amateur Radio operators that these unique “E” calls have priority over all other users of the widely-spaced amateur radio frequencies.
Since the formation of AREC in 1932, communications have been provided for thousands of emergency events ranging from searches to natural disasters to civil emergencies and for total or partial loss of telephone communications.
Each AREC section is attached to a NZART Branch, the Branch 22 Section leader is Paul Rennie, ZL2RE.
If you are interested in AREC and would like some more info please contact Paul.
For more information on AREC in general please visit the AREC page at NZART: http://www.nzart.org.nz/arec/