Polk County Amateur Radio Emergency Service, ARES, provides emergency and public service communications to our served agencies. Getting the message through “when all else fails”.

Our served agencies are Polk County Emergency Management, American Red Cross, Polk County CERT Teams, and the National Weather Service.

Wonder what these activation levels are?  Click here to see what these activation levels are.

Our next regularly scheduled meeting at the Polk County EOC will be on Thursday, August 27, 2026 at 7:00pm.  (Doors open at 6:30pm)

You can review the Winlink Message Monday changes by clicking here.  Also, you can review our procedures for our Simplex Nets by clicking here.

One of our served agencies, CERT, as well as other emergency communicators, have a GMRS net on the Polk CERT repeater.  (note: This is NOT an ARES net, but welcome to all FCC licensed GMRS operators interested in emergency communications)

For those who may be operating as a Net Control Station you can click here for the updated Net Preamble (updated December 2025)

Have you ever wanted to know if a ham you know also has a GMRS license?  Well, you can find out by clicking this link.

The FM repeater system is a wide area linked repeater system. Pick the repeater located closest to you. You should be able to reach one of our repeaters with a 5 watt HT from anywhere in Polk County. If you are not, please contact Polk ARES through our contact page and we will help you find an antenna solution.

The repeater is Echolink accessible (Echolink node 3363).

Click here for a coverage map of the WC4PEM FM linked repeater system.

The WC4PEM D-Star Gateway repeater located in Bartow is on 444.4875.  You can view the dashboard for this repeater by clicking here. (note: this repeater is a D-Star Gateway and is connected to the Internet.  It is NOT linked to the FM repeater system)