jgorman01 wrote: > Hate to tell you but some of us cranky, bitter, and rude (old) men > have simply been there and done that. I certainly saw and worked with some generous & kind old man hams in my efforts. (Shared a shelter operation with an 80 year old!!) But did not see hardly any of the same ones that annoy us all on HF there. The rude, cranky, selfish types. > For example, do you think a permanently installed "ham" antenna > is going to survive on a roof top when all other commercial grade > antennas have been destroyed? This tells me you've not been there, and are missing the point. Yes, ham antennas do survive when properly installed on hospital & shelter rooftops. It's the repeaters and high sights which do not. Even in a hurricane. Now if the EOC is leveled, as happened in the county I worked in coastal Miss, all bets are off.
The reason hospitals (and such) preinstall antennas is not to support their communications, it's to be able to communicate with ad-hoc shelters & relief efforts. IE: With the very volunteers you mention. Most often on 2m, but at times you need HF. No, the HF dipole won't survive. But the coax to the roof, the radial net, the antenna mount, and the HF vertical carefully stored in the closet will. And will go up in 15m. > Part of our ability to do emcomm is > using our OWN equipment in a portable fashion to replace that which > has been destroyed. The other part is the geographic spread of hams > in a location. It makes what gets destroyed somewhat random. Relying > on prepositioned equipment is no better than public safety doing the > same. > You've never had to stand outside a large building to get coverage then. Or deal with running coax out a door, around the side of the building, etc. 300' of coax pinched in a door to keep skeeters out rather than a nice clean run of prepositioned coax. I spent quite a bit of time with the head of mtc of one of our local hospital families. He's a good friend, and wanted a joint debrief on what he & I both saw at Katrina. His action was to pre-position multiple coax runs, dual band antenna (short diamond type), etc. Common sense stuff. If the need arises he's now setup to communicate with ham volunteers. This means those manning red cross shelters, ferrying relief supplies, ferrying staff, etc. Not hospital business, but community recovery efforts. > Have you ever told the ARC or SA they should include > commercial radios in their shelter standard inventory? Again, it's clear you've never participated in a large scale relief effort by your questions. ARC has dedicated low band freqs for their primary ops. What they do not have, and will be unlikely to ever afford is radios/gear/ops for every shelter in a large scale disaster. That's where ham's fill the gap. There were hundred's of shelters in Katrina. Each with dozens to hundreds of people in them. 20+ shelters in the single county I worked. Only one of them had communications during the hurricane itself, because a lowly no code tech barely out of highschool had the foresight to preposition his IC-706 and a dual band antenna prior to the storm. As soon as it was safe, he erected HF dipole so he could monitor the nets, and as soon as other ham's arrived they were linked. The others simply were out of communication. No way to get medical assist. No way to get law enforcement. (the two main types of communications assist shelters need) > These are all issues some of have dealt with and have experience in. > Some of us have lost our predilection with being ham-centric in all > things radio related. > > Let's see, we used: - GMRS - Red Cross low band (for several days I had a Red Cross mobile radio installed in my truck) Again, far afield from digital radio. I had not realized that the digitalradio forum was so anti-emcomm, which is a bit sad, as it's a natural fit. Last post from me on this subject. Have fun, Alan km4ba
