How to Join Us

Membership

We invite all persons who may have the interest to join us, whether or not you have an FCC Amateur Radio license or two-way amateur radio equipment. We'll help you get trained to get your license, a radio, and to maintain your radio communication skills.

An online enrollment form for "membership" in the Los Gatos-Monte Sereno ARES-RACES (LGMS-ARES-RACES) EmComm group is provided at:

http://www.scc-ares-races.org/arrl-info.html

Some of the information solicited is optional (such as your DoB). Other information you may not know unless you are already covered (such as Disaster Service Worker (DSW), the mechanism within the State of California that provides Workers' Compensation to voluntary emergency assistance persons, such as ourselves).

Membership in the LG/MS CARES group signifies that you are willing and able to volunteer your amateur radio communication services to the town of Los Gatos and city of Monte Sereno in the event of a declared emergency or related activities.

Disaster Service Worker (DSW) Liability Insurance

Los Gatos provides members of Los Gatos/Monte Sereno CERT with DSW registration for activities within their legal jurisdiction during declared emergencies and for activities in which we are trained and supervised.

In addition, Los Gatos has an umbrella liability insurance policy from ABAG that covers volunteers in most circumstances.

You will be considered an Active Member if you have participated in any of our activities at least once in the prior 12 months, otherwise, you will be considered InActive. Of course, if you permanently move out of the area you will be removed from our roster.

You do not need to be a formal member in order to participate in our weekly check-ins, our monthly Hospital Net, attend our monthly meetings or volunteer for the Children's Holiday Parade. Any of those activities are an easy way to become familiar with our group.

Our monthly member meetings are usually on the second Saturday of the month at the LG-MS Police Operations Center, 15900 Los Gatos Blvd (near Blossom Hill Rd) from 2:00p to 4:00p. All are welcome.

We currently have about 50 active members from Los Gatos with a goal of 64 by the end of 2019.

There are over 450 residents of Los Gatos and Monte Sereno who have current FCC Amateur Radio licenses out of a population of 26,400 aged 18 and older. That is about twice the per-capita ratio of the U.S. population with ham licenses. While the FCC does not have any restriction on the age of a license holder, for our purposes, members should be at least 18 to be unrestricted in assignments, however, teenagers with parental permission may be assigned to certain support activities.