I would like to see the documentation of this. As a former employee of a state emergency management agency and a former section emergency coordinator and a Ham for a long time the scenario described must be missing some important variables.
If HF Winlink could hold effective communications on HF then so could a dozen or more modes. There is no technological reason why HF Winlink was "the only" reliable mode -- unless the modes chosen were skewed to be certain of that outcome. Not looking for an argument, just some healthy cynicism based on a little knowledge of politics and science. HF Winlink may have been "one of many" modes more capable of effective weak signal communications but one cannot ever make the claim that it would be the "only". Add to that the need for redundant hardware and the high value of simple over complex and HF Winlink would be a poor first/primary choice. The hardware is so rare as to be readily postulated as "probably unavailable" at both ends and the complexity of the systems rise above standard emergency requirements for mission-critical applications. A third-tier or fourth-tier nice-to-have perhaps. IMHO, YMMV ... 73, doc kd4e > Last August San Diego Section ARES ran a Simulated Emergency Test in San > Diego and Imperial County where we simulated the effects of a 7.9 > earthquake next door in Imperial County ( a likely scenario) which > destroyed most of the local infrasture. > > Due to the simulated outages of local infrastructure, repeaters and > power sources, we were unable to establish VHF/UHF/Cell Phone or Land > Line voice communications between the San Diego EOC and the Imperial > County EOC. > > The only communications that proved reliable was HF Winlink. San Diego > EOC was able to connect into a Winlink Node in Texas and Imperial County > was able to connect to another HF node and we established and maintained > both Critical, Tactical and H&W communications through Winlink Email. > > I might note that the success of HF Winlink when everything else failed > during the SET really changed the minds of a lot of died in the wool > Winlink Haters around here. > > Could we have accomplished the same with HF voice Relays?.. > > We tried HF voice without much success (they were in a HF dead zone)... > however in an real (non SET) disaster with more HF stations around for > relays...Likely... but definitely not with the same ease of use or > reliability... > > So there definitely is a place for Winlink EMCOMM in our bag of tricks... > __________________________________________________________ > Howard S. White Ph.D. P. Eng., VE3GFW/K6 ex-AE6SM KY6LA Need a Digital mode QSO? Connect to Telnet://cluster.dynalias.org Other areas of interest: The MixW Reflector : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/themixwgroup/ DigiPol: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Digipol (band plan policy discussion) Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
