Re: [digitalradio] Re: Some thing we've talked about.
Joel, I can agree with you in most of what you say. However maybe FEMA should be set up to use a military type of communication set up to pass traffic from the stricken area back to Washington. There is a misleading of amateur radio to a lot of local officials and the general public. Most are under the impression just because someone is an amateur radio operator that they know everything. This is far from the truth. Just because someone is an amateur radio operator does not mean that is know how to handle traffic. Where the amateurs come in is in the affected area. In most cases the affected area is going to localized to one section of the country. The cell phones and internet will be down along with most regular telephones and electrical power. This is where the amateur operators come in. They can relay emergency communication from the affected area back to the central command. Also there maybe more that one search and rescue units in the affected area and on different frequencies and can not pass traffic between the different units. Emergency traffic should be pass first the health and welfare second. All other traffic would be passed as time would permit. The general public really does not understand what emergency traffic meas. Emergency means the treat to life and/or property. Yes everyone that had a family member or close friend in the stricken area would be wanting to know where they and that they were okay. I thought, and maybe I am wrong, That the frequencies on the 60 meter band was supposed to be for emergency use. Maybe what should have bee done was set aside maybe 15-20 KHz on the HF bands just for emergency use only. When we were allotted the 60 meter frequencies, most radios were not set up to transmit on 60 meters. Most everyone had to modify their radio to transmit on that bands. If the US was attacked by another country the president would more than likely provoke the War Powers Act and then only RACES would be allowed to use the HF bands. Just my thoughts. Joe W4JSI - Original Message - From: Joel Kolstad To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, December 05, 2005 8:39 PM Subject: [digitalradio] Re: Some thing we've talked about. Hi Walt, What can amateur radio being to the table? Unfortunately, I think the answer is 'less and less' as time goes by. As communication technology advances, the simple fact is that people will grow more accustomed to reasonably fast Internet access connected to their commodity laptops, voice communications via cell phones, etc. All of this requires significant infrastructure (geosynchronous satellites aren't cheap!), and hence MONEY. There's no way for a bunch of hams who might be willing to spend a couple thousand bucks on gear for themselves can compete with multi-million dollar military communication systems. And when you think about it, since we -- the taxpayers -- are the ones paying for that infrastructure, shouldn't we fully expect that folks like FEMA or the Red Cross will be using it during disasters? I do encourage hams to do whatever they can to assist in emergency communications, and there's plenty of scenarios where they'll continue to be a great asset, but if I were a FEMA director I'd be pretty hesitant to have an official policy of relying on volunteers with little or no funding if I thought I could instead rely on the military.I don't think that the declining use of hams for emergency communication particularly threatens the bands themselves (i.e., the FCC taking the HF bands and reallocating them). Instead, I think the simple metric of whether or not the bands continue to be well used will have a much larger impact as to their continued existance -- a lot of the idealism of the amateur radio service somehow existing for the good of the public (rather than just as a cool little resource for a bunch of hobbyists to use for their own enjoyment) went away years ago (about the same time that people like Howard Stern started convincing much of the public that the FCC trying to regulate the content of the public airwaves was somehow an inherently bad idea).---Joel Kolstad Need a Digital mode QSO? Connect to telnet://208.15.25.196/ Other areas of interest: The MixW Reflector : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/themixwgroup/ Looking for digital mode software? Check the quick commerical free link below http://www.obriensweb.com/digimodes.html YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS Visit your group "digitalradio" on the web. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
[digitalradio] Re: Some thing we've talked about.
Yes, a ground-based control station is required for access to a geosynchronous satellite. One could build such a station around an SUV, with appropriate off-grid power sources: generator, solar, and/or deployable wind turbine. WIFI under part 97 with a mesh topology would make for a flexible, resilient, rapidly-deployable WAN. As for health and welfare traffic, a picocell would be convenient, but cellphones won't stay powered for more than a day. Offering public access to laptops around the SUV would support voice (VOIP), email, and IM traffic. 73, Dave, AA6YQ --- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, dshults [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I assume this was a single point occurrence? Or... were there 200 such stations set up? If a single point, did it satisfactorily support the needs of the entire region? If as many satellite uplinks were provided as were required, the initial and on-going costs necessary to support such a response just might be beyond the scope of reasonable planning. I'm not sure about military satellites, but I believe commercial sats require operational ground-based control stations. It's not simply point-to-point communications. ... Duane N7QDN --- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, DuBose Walt Civ AETC CONS/LGCA [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Here are some excerpts from E-Mail between individuals deeply involved in FEMA and NDMS communications. From a FEMA Incident Commander who is an active amateur radio operator... The subject of this email is Communications and it is from the Southern Mississippi FEMA Incident Manager. He was without cell phone, and Internet capability. He cornered a State Police Car and asked them to be his commo. They said fine but they had no commo too. Jim was at wits end when an Army Captain came to him and asked if he had any commo. Jim said no commo and it's a big problem. The Captain said no problem, and got on his radio and ordered an Army Communications Van to be placed at Jim's disposal. Two hours later a van arrived and it had 4 guys that set up a big dish antenna and then asked Jim how many telephones he needed and what computers needed the Internet? Jim ordered 5 telephones and the Internet for his laptop. Soon Jim was on the phone to FEMA letting them know about the situation and giving them his telephone number. Jim was found by the Salvation Army. They said they can set up 85 soup kitchens but needed $560,000 fast to stock the kitchens. Jim called FEMA requesting the funding and the Salvation Army had the money in 3 hours. Due to this success story from Katrina, we are all told to use the Army for communications support and I have the phone number to call when needed. I fear that what we can do with Ham Radio is too little and far too late. We can help with Health and Welfare traffic which is not done by the official part of an Incident. From an amateur radio operator who works closely with NDMS and on a DMAT (Disaster Medical Assistance Team)... Your posting this morning was most timely and coincided with a FL3-DMAT team meeting I was attending. To underscore the points you made, members of the Comms unit, all of whom hold an Amateur Radio license, were advised this morning that NO Amateur Radio, FRS or GMRS gear may be brought to a deployment, effective immediately. If any of the above is observed by FEMA, the DMAT unit will lose its funding for the next twelve months! It is becoming more and more apparent the Feds are doing what they can, short of taking our frequency allocations and licenses away, to push Amateur Radio out of the picture. I fear once they have achieved success doing to, they will use it to justify a revocation of spectrum and license privileges. This should be a wake-up call...amateur radio has less and less to offer emergency and disaster relief communications. While I like nothing more than a good rag chew on 40 or 75 with my amateur radio friends of 40+ years, I believe that those days of me being able to do so are rapidly coming to and end. Today ones community service is evaluated as value to the community, state, nations. Funding for groups is based on that. With the money set aside for Katrina and Rita relief, you should have been able to purchase complete new HF dual band stations of every ham in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida...plus a few other states. But that is hardly the amount given to the ARRL. The more value you bring to the table, the better your position of survival is. This doesn't make it right or anything else...it is just the way it is. Survival of the righteous and just is not assured. Survival of the performers is. What can amateur radio being to the table? No quick
