Running a laptop under emergency conditions is not that practical other than for short duration events. If you want to have ALE available you need to keep the software running or else the ALE selcal would be missed. For regular communications with AC power, then no problem. The ALE antenna issue is a major one for either portable or fixed though.
We agree that it was not a good long term move to only allow the entry level license access to VHF and up. I favor allowing CW and limited (very limited) additional HF modes on a few bands. Especially bands that are nearly unused most of the time. On the other hand, there are hams such as my wife who have little interest in HF DXing or anything like that. She has recently expressed a slight interest in HF for mobile use due to our limited distances covered by repeaters, but only for practical use. Having said that, with all the new rigs that have six meters and often even higher VHF/UHF bands, it is incredibly easy to get on CW/SSB VHF and up. Even so, there seems to be less interest today than there was many years ago when it was much harder to get on these bands with other than AM or FM rigs. Especially when you consider the number of hams who can get on these frequencies and modes. The VHF and higher frequency bands have a wealth of potential experimentation, long distance/weak signal, EME, meteor scatter, high speed linking, etc. But there just is not an interest by most hams. For example, I have suggested that I can be QRV 160 through 6 meters on most all sound card modes. But almost no takers in my area. In terms of HF e-mail, there is not really enough spectrum space to handle much traffic. Especially with the intrusive wide band modes that take up an entire voice bandwidth. The good news is that PSKmail is a good start to do exactly what you want. In fact, it is really the only decentralized e-mail currently available for the amateur bands. For casual use, Winlink 2000 can work well although it would be risky to rely on it for emergency use due to its reliance on the internet to function. PSKmail's PSK63 signals are spectrum efficient when compared to Pactor 2 and especially Pactor 3. And over time it is not unreasonable to expect that PSKmail will improve. I quite disagree with you on the ham Katrina response. Having ALE would have made no difference at all in our response. The fact is that hams generally were the ones following the rules and moved out of the affected area. Obviously, once they did that, they were no longer available to operate from those affected areas and it was not safe to be sending in untrained individuals to such wide spread disaster areas. Only the military and trained personnel should be going into such areas until things are secure enough for untrained. If a ham was trained in some specialty for disasters, they would be used for that capacity, not communications. Either way, ALE would not be involved since nets are set up in advance on known frequencies of operation. VHF voice is THE main communications medium for disasters. Most of the communications are going to be tactical and immediate and if you have had the ARRL ARECC training, you know that it is inappropriate to ever use any keyboard entered messaging for such messages as there is too much risk in terms of immediacy. You will occasionally find long messaging needed for support purposes, health and welfare, etc. so it has a place, but it is very low in terms of priorities. My wife and I have actually been up all night providing communications support for one of the Wisconsin Adventure Races. This event is an intense activity including lengthy hiking through extremely difficult terrain, accessing numerous targets (and proving you were there), switching to canoe or kayak and negotiating over a very tricky river, switching to bicycle and riding about 5 hours round trip to another distant site to climb and then rappel down a 170 foot cliff and return to the starting point. We primarily used VHF voice with some use of Winlink 2000 via VHF Telpac and some simplex, but mostly repeater access. We could have done it different ways. While HF would be nice, there was only a couple of operators who even have the license to operate HF, much less have any interest in HF operations of this type. I wish there was more interest, but it just is not there with most hams. 73, Rick, KV9U expeditionradio wrote: >Hi Rick, > >You bring up some good points. > > > >>Rick, KV9U wrote: >>- The technology you recommend requires considerable extra >>equipment (computers/interfaces/frequency agile antennas >>and band hopping) which is fairly complicated >> >> > >Actually, it requires nothing more than the usual ham radio rig and a >laptop. As for the ALE to initialize the contact, you can now buy an >HF radio in the US$1000 to US$1500 cost range that has ALE built in. > > > >>We are now finding that with newer hams, there is less interest >>than ever in anything beyond VHF and maybe UHF voice. >> >> > >In USA, that is almost entirely due to an antiquated licensing, >testing, and band control structure that has unwisely relegated most >new hams to VHF and UHF. Most of them do not survive the boredom of >VHF/UHF repeaters, and rapidly fade away from the ham community. >Hopefully, that will change soon, as it already has in many other >countries of the world, and more hams will join HF operation. > > > >>- If you do not use this technology on a frequent basis, it >>will not be there when the emergency occurs. >> >> > >I agree completely with you on that point. For that to work, there >needs to be a good reason for hams to use such systems in normal >everyday operation. Having fun is a good reason :) HF email and >messaging that is internet-connected provides one motivation, but it >should not stop there. It needs to have each station be able to >function on a stand-alone basis, de-centralized, peer-to-peer, and >seamlessly internet-independent when it is required to function in >that manner. It should be "On Demand" and not require complex operator >start up sequences, scheduled nets, manual operator monitoring, or >phone calls to friends. It should provide the whole gamut, a variety >of desirable normal ham activity such as instantaneous real-time >propagation analysis to real ham stations, status and activity >reporting, DXing, locating, and casual QSOs. > > > >>- In a real emergency it won't be necessary to notify anyone on >>HF. It will be very obvious. >> >> > >Agreed, disasters are often obvious, but the fact that they are >obvious doesn't necessarily provide the communications. The Katrina >disaster was an excellent example of obviousness without responsiveness. > > > >>Amateur radio fills that interoperability now with standard >>VHF voice. >> >> > >In a disaster scenario, I don't believe VHF can be relied upon to >fulfill anything but strictly local comms. The repeaters go down in >many kinds of disasters. And the ones that remain are for voice traffic. > >Bonnie KQ6XA > > >. > > > > > >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 > > > > > > > > > > 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! 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