Joel: In an odd way I think we pretty much agree. What I was trying to achieve was an accepted means to test and practice what we might be called upon to do in a real emergency. You're idea of going ahead with using PGP or some such encryption and transmitting the decryption keys in the clear along with it is interesting. I guess that's close to what I asked the FCC District Director to permit but didn't take the final step of saying that we'd also transmit the decryption keys during exercises, just that we'd make them available. I'll have to think about that.
I do have to differ with you a bit on the point of helping to shore up the professional services infrastructure and funding. Most of our served agencies are pretty particular about their systems and I'm not at all comfortable putting myself into that mix, even though I'm comfortable technically. We do, however, have Hams in our group who are commercial communications people who serve those agencies, so in a way I guess we're partly there. As for funding, we're not finding that so difficult. We took the time to become a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation. Our success with the professional services and the support we get from them has helped us secure some good donations. We're also working on some grant opportunities that look promising. In addition, we've had good equipment donations, and some of those have come from the emergency managers themselves. None of that happens without work and certainly none of that happens without having a successful organization, but it can happen. Yes, we've tried very hard not to be just "... a bunch of older guys who have all the best intentions." You're correct that intentions are only that, intentions, and there's considerable effort from there to performance. I guess I have more confidence than you that Hams, with even somewhat marginal resources, can provide very useful services in disasters. It's not easy, and it's not obvious, but if you consider what can be done, what should be done, and that nobody else is going to do it, disaster communications seems right for us Hams. Chuck - N8DNX Joel Koltner wrote: > Hi Charlie, > > "We also see this time and time again even > in simulations where the professional emergency services have trouble > with their communications, their systems become overloaded, and there's > things that need to be communicated that aren't central to their > important tasks." > >
