Up to 100 amateur radio operators in about 50 locations in Virginia and North Carolina will carry out a simulated emergency test from 8 a.m. to noon Saturday testing their ability to provide communications when more standard channels become inoperable.

A series of simulated weather advisories will be transmitted tonight from the National Weather Service office in Blacksburg over Skywarn Amateur Radio repeaters in the two states describing a major ice storm such as the ones experienced in the region during the mid-1990s. Interstate ham radio repeaters will report simulated weather, road and power conditions to the office, as well as mock reports of 35,000 vehicles and 70,000 interstate travelers being stranded.

Another exercise will involve a simulated search for four missing hikers on Whitetop Mountain in Grayson County. Communication stations will be set up at Twin County Regional Hospital in Galax and Wythe County Community Hospital in Wytheville, and a command station at Carroll County Emergency Services. Amateur radio emergency services people will operate communications stations at the Christiansburg Emergency Operations Center and a Red Cross shelter at Blacksburg Middle School.

Other centers will be activated in Roanoke, Franklin, Montgomery and Floyd counties.

Area radio personnel have been called into service during the past year during emergencies such as when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005.

One was Glen Sage of Hillsville, who served as a radio operator with the Mississippi Red Cross in Hattiesburg, Miss., with other Virginians shortly after the hurricane struck in late August 2005. They provided communications to Red Cross centers over a nine-county, 50-mile radius.

Sage, who is Virginia section coordinator of the American Radio Relay League, is the western area planner for Saturday's test.

This simulated emergency test may be the largest Amateur Radio Emergency Services drill held on the East Coast since one in Connecticut three years ago, said Roger Bell, with the Pulaski County Amateur Radio Emergency Service, part of the Virginia section of the American Radio Relay League.