But to Lewis’ point there can be some jerks and know-it-alls in the ranks of the amateur ranks for sure. It’s a group dynamic thing. Most times in the strong ham radio communities you will find that the commercial radio shops are also hams and have volunteered their time and equipment to build and maintain the systems, so in reality they are just as professionally trained and certified for a lot of their critical infrastructure such as repeaters on tower sites.
The real big thing that amateur radio can bring to the public safety arena is the ability to use their HF systems for large area communications without any need for infrastructure other than their antennas and radios. It’s not real sexy and not portable or handheld use but it brings a big capability to emergency situations that rarely have any systems in place to do that. They each have their place, neither one is a magic bullet and the only way amateur radio offers any real community benefit is to have trained and experienced radio operators who understand the incident command system. After the emergency has started is not the time to bring a rookie in who does not know their place and with who and how to properly communicate to the benefit of all involved. Thank You, Brian Webster www.wirelessmapping.com www.Broadband-Mapping.com From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Jaime Solorza Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2016 8:23 PM To: Animal Farm Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Tessco Show Yep... On Feb 25, 2016 6:18 PM, "Brian Webster" <i...@wirelessmapping.com> wrote: One of the big reasons amateur radio systems tend to stay on line when all others fail is due to the simple fact that the amateur radio operators build and maintain their own networks. Public Safety Systems rely on commercial contractors to maintain and repair their systems. The agencies rarely have any good understanding of their systems when there is an outage and therefore they don’t have ways to overcome the problems. They deal with this by pouring a lot of money in to redundant and backup systems. In large scale disasters these commercial repair contracts get spread thin real fast and have soo many problems to fix all at the same time. Amateur radio systems have been put together with more creative solutions that cost little to nothing because it’s an all-volunteer effort. When things break they don’t just throw money at the problem to fix it. Jamie, the reason you don’t hear talk of amateur radio systems as shows like you are at is because they provide services for almost free, that does not sell equipment and services for the commercial vendors. I am not saying public safety systems should not have backup systems in place mind you, just stating the obvious that may not be so obvious to most. If you were selling stuff to make a living would you tell a potential client how to not purchase what you are offering? Do you see the cable companies showing consumers how to get free off the air TV? Thank You, Brian Webster www.wirelessmapping.com www.Broadband-Mapping.com From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Jaime Solorza Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2016 11:34 PM To: Animal Farm Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Tessco Show Yes as in anything we have good and not so good...my point was that HAM folks have had systems operating when no one else did and it makes sense that emergency agencies have knowledge and relationship with local folks just in case your state of the art system fails. Look at how thinking out of the box saved astronauts way back then...or poor analogy...when UFC first came out...all these high rank black belts got whooped by skinny juijitsu guy....now they have adapted and evolved...same thing to me...fuck the politics... make it work. Period On Feb 24, 2016 8:46 PM, "Colin Stanners" <cstann...@gmail.com> wrote: Well it's true there's a huge variety of people and experience in the ham community, it's certain there will be some that suck, and so it's a risk getting involved without good research first. But in general, they - or I should say us hams- have a very nice combination of tower sites, active hardware, spare hardware, RF knowledge and eagerness for community service so as to respond rapidly in any situation. I just hope more hams will evolve from old voice / kilobit-speed packet networks to new 2.3 / 5.9ghz IP systems so as to keep pushing boundaries and advancing the hobby. On Feb 24, 2016 9:00 PM, "Mike Hammett" <af...@ics-il.net> wrote: I'm guessing Lewis and one or two others have had some sort of bad dealing with a HAM and now hate the all forever for any impractical reason. ----- Mike Hammett <http://www.ics-il.com/> Intelligent Computing Solutions <https://www.facebook.com/ICSIL> <https://plus.google.com/+IntelligentComputingSolutionsDeKalb> <https://www.linkedin.com/company/intelligent-computing-solutions> <https://twitter.com/ICSIL> <http://www.midwest-ix.com/> Midwest Internet Exchange <https://www.facebook.com/mdwestix> <https://www.linkedin.com/company/midwest-internet-exchange> <https://twitter.com/mdwestix> <http://www.thebrotherswisp.com/> The Brothers WISP <https://www.facebook.com/thebrotherswisp> <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXSdfxQv7SpoRQYNyLwntZg> _____ From: "Lewis Bergman" <lewis.berg...@gmail.com> To: af@afmug.com Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2016 8:33:56 PM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Tessco Show FirstNet is a joke. Hardly anyone has reached DHS' level 6 interoperability and they are going to replace all that hardware at a cost by some estimates of over $10 billion.There have been several hair brained schemes to pay for it but nobody has proposed a plan that is likely to succeed. The only viable option seems to let the carriers do it. Great, just what we need: a public safety system with all the reliability of our cell systems. Back on the HAM topic huh? The reason they don't like running exercises with them is that they are a crap shoot. Some are great, some are complete jokes. Nobody wants to be graded with the wildcard in the mix. On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 5:34 PM Jaime Solorza <losguyswirel...@gmail.com> wrote: well I attended some interesting sessions. The Public safety one had several speakers from industry , gov't and academia... Learned allot and will share some important items later but I asked a question that really caught them off guard.....there was no mention of any testing or work on their disaster scenarios which involved HAM radio guys. One of the members acknowledged that during Katrina and Bastrop emergencies...the HAM radio network was the only available in many places and then asked why they never mentioned using 4.9 GHz but only 2.4 and 5GHz...mu ch more to come about First Net and testing to be done on dangerous border.....Canada and US is April. Lots of stuff to share and some new antenna players I never saw before. Met Sakid Ahmed from Cambium and chatted for an hour ...learned some cool things.. Well late lunch and Tecate beckons....chime in later,,,,,talk amongst yourselves..topic is LMR over IP and IoT.... laters Jaime Solorza Wireless Systems Architect 915-861-1390
