Getting to Know WCH Connect — And How We Might Be Able to Help

We recently came across a local group doing exactly the kind of community-level emergency communication work we care about, and we wanted to introduce them: WCH Connect, a city-supported GMRS radio initiative in Washington Court House, Ohio.

What Is WCH Connect?

WCH Connect is a volunteer community radio effort organized by Dr. John Nestor, with support from radio specialist Jim Scott, aimed at giving Washington Court House residents a reliable way to communicate when cell service goes down. The idea grew out of the recognition that communities depend heavily on cell phones for local communication, and that other towns nearby were already promoting General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) two-way radios as a backup option for neighborhood-level connection.

This isn't a hobbyist side project — it has real civic backing. The City of Washington Court House purchased a repeater and had it installed on the radio tower at the Washington Fire Department, giving the whole area a shared communications backbone that GMRS users can tie into. The group is headed by Dr. John Nestor and has grown enough to draw outside guest speakers, including a presentation from the Southwest Ohio GMRS Association on the role of GMRS in emergency and disaster communications.

Built Around Real Emergency Use Cases

What stands out about WCH Connect is how directly it's tied to actual severe weather and emergency response — not just radio as a hobby. The group has hosted the Washington Court House Fire Chief to walk through the city's newly activated tornado warning sirens, helping members understand how the siren system interacts with their radio watch.

The broader vision includes organizing volunteer GMRS radio watches for neighborhood situational awareness, broadcasting alerts in real time when traditional warning systems fail during cell and internet outages. Members have discussed forming a Community Radio Watch program to relay messages, pass along safety information and alerts, and share weather event information across the network. That mission — trained local volunteers passing accurate, timely information during severe weather — will sound familiar to anyone involved in Skywarn.

Where We Might Be Able to Help

We've been kicking around the idea of an Android companion app that handles two core functions: pulling National Weather Service alerts based on the phone's current location, and helping a spotter or radio-watch volunteer file a location-tagged report in the field.

That's a near-perfect fit for what WCH Connect volunteers are trying to do. A radio watch member out in the neighborhood during a storm doesn't want to hunt through a website for active warnings — they want their phone to tell them what's in effect for exactly where they're standing. And when they spot something worth reporting — flooding on a street, storm damage, a downed line — being able to grab their GPS position and drop it straight into a report, formatted the way their net expects, saves precious time compared to trying to describe a location from memory over the radio.

We don't have anything to announce yet, but we wanted to put this on the radar. If a lightweight, GPS-aware alerts-and-reporting app could support what WCH Connect's radio watch volunteers are already doing, we'd like to explore building it — and it's exactly the kind of free, community-serving tool we've always tried to put out for the amateur radio and spotter community.

If you're in the Washington Court House area, you can find WCH Connect on Facebook, and we'd encourage anyone interested in local emergency communication to check them out.

73, and stay connected.