Having read things back and forth, I have a question: I'm not in ARES, RACES, or any other emergency group, but I was wondering Why choose a world-wide, open-gateway, type of system to be an emergency system? The way D-Star gets things out other than local broadcast range is via the gateway, and if there were a major incident, wouldn't the internet be considered to be "out" as well? If so, then you'd just have the broadcast range, same as an analog repeater.
No, I'm not trying to start any arguments, just wondering why put all the effort into creating a world-accessible system for local emergency communication. Matt / N3WNX
