On Feb 29, 9:14�pm, Klystron wrote:
wrote:
Klystron wrote:

But what if they are transporting several people - say, a
young family that was in a serious auto accident?
Or suppose they were
transporting desperately-needed medicines, blood, etc.,
during an
epidemic?

If you want to COMMANDEER something, re-read my previous
post. It
doesn't matter if there are 99 people in the ambulance, they are all
having heart attacks and the ambulance is on fire.

However, if
the ambulance breaks down, they can't commandeer your
car. For a
government agency to seize private property
(a category that includes
repeaters, transceivers, etc.) for their own use, they
must have a
declaration of emergency, declaration of martial law,
or, in individual
cases, a court order.

I'm not sure what the ultimate legality is, in a case like that or the
others I described. I suspect that government folks would not
seize
private property for emergency use unless they were
desperate, because
of the possible liability.

� �Look for definitions of terms like "declaration of emer
gency,"
"martial law" or "disaster area." This is heavily traveled territory -
we don't need to reinvent the wheel, here in this newsgroup.

The main point is that there has to be a clear and defined life-and-
death emergency.

But there's also the point of who can declare an emergency? Can the
EMTs say that the ambulance breakdown is an emergency?

OTOH, would you want to have it on your conscience
that a person or a
family died because you wouldn't let the ambulance
folks use your car
when it was desperately needed?

� �See bottom paragraph.

OK

I don't think the FD person wanted the repeaters.
He said they could
use the frequencies, not the repeaters. And the frequencies
are public
property, after all. An amateur or club might own the
repeater but
they don't own the frequencies.

This makes it a completely different situation from the commandeering
of private property.

Further complicating the situation is the fact that
many if not most
amateur radio repeaters aren't installed on the
owner's property.

� �If you put your shoes in a locker at the gym, are they
still YOUR
shoes?

Of course - but if someone needed them in a life-and-death
emergency....

There's also the question of contract provisions as part of the rental
agreement. Shoes in a locker are different from permanently installed
radio equipment requiring power and radiating RF.

Like the situation of the broken-down ambulance, would any
radio
amateur want it on his/her conscience that a building
burned down, and/
or people died, because s/he wouldn't let the
emergency service people
use an amateur radio repeater in an emergency
when it was desperately
needed?

� �There is a bit of difference between a civic minded ama
teur
radio
club voluntarily making its facilities available and a government
employee with an inflated sense of entitlement believing that
he can
seize whatever he wants to seize whenever he want to seize it
because
fires and sick people in ambulances are really, really important.

Of course - but what if the emergency really does meet K2ASP's double-
prong test? That is, it's a real life-and-death emergency, and there
are no other facilities available that can do the job?

As KB9X points out, the quoted person who said "everything we do is
life-and-death" was way out of line, and not representative at all.
But what about real-life situations that meet the two-prong test?
Granted they are very rare, and most of us will never encounter them,
but the time to think about them is before they happen.

73 de Jim, N2EY

On Sat, 01 Mar 2008 01:05:35 -0500, Phil Kane wrote:

On Fri, 29 Feb 2008 10:20:00 EST, Klystron wrote:

It is not as simple as that. What constitutes an emergency?

Gee, let's open that can of worms once again!

It's a two-prong test - it has to be a situation involving immediate
safety of life or property, AND no other means of communication are
available.

And it really isn't that difficult IMO. The fellow who directly
called the Police didn't have a need to do that, and in truth would have
been better off to call 911, as they are the people with the resources
needed to rescue people in that situation.

There are some good reasons to use Amateur radio in emergencies.
As an example, our local repeater system is a multi receiver polling
system

http://www.nittany-arc.net/newrepeater.html

that takes the poll from several sites, selects the strongest one, and
relays that to the main repeater. In this way, we can cover the whole
county in a manner that 300 mw can pretty well work the entire area. This

is all the more impressive when you look at a topo map of Centre County
PA.

Back to the reasons, if there is a deployment in the county, it
can be a little difficult to establish comms from the regular systems,
and in the northern parts of the county, cell phone coverage isn't easy
to come by once you get away from the path that I-80 cuts through the
hills.

So in the nooks and crannies of the north part of the county, our
repeater is a good choice, and if there are operations in both north and
south, ham radio is a pretty good choice, and fits the criteria.

I believe that in most cases, people aren't going to care a whole
lot if there is a little gray area, but the "anything" description is
just inaccurate and misleading.

While this may be a small minority of emergency workers who fit
the "I can do anything I want to do" description, they do need their
errors pointed out when they make them. According to the fellow I had the

discussion with at the meeting, there would be no rules anytime.

-73 de Mike N3LI -

wrote:
Klystron wrote:
[...]

Look for definitions of terms like "declaration of emergency,"
"martial law" or "disaster area." This is heavily traveled territory -
we don't need to reinvent the wheel, here in this newsgroup.


The main point is that there has to be a clear and defined life-and-
death emergency.

But there's also the point of who can declare an emergency? Can the
EMTs say that the ambulance breakdown is an emergency?


Ambulance crews cannot authorize themselves to commandeer property;
only civilian government officials can do that. The gravity of the
emergency has nothing to do with it. It is just not their call to make.

[...]

If you put your shoes in a locker at the gym, are they still YOUR
shoes?


Of course - but if someone needed them in a life-and-death
emergency....


They would have to ASK you for them.


There's also the question of contract provisions as part of the rental
agreement. Shoes in a locker are different from permanently installed
radio equipment requiring power and radiating RF.


Not from a property ownership point of view.


[...]

Of course - but what if the emergency really does meet K2ASP's double-
prong test? That is, it's a real life-and-death emergency, and there
are no other facilities available that can do the job?

As KB9X points out, the quoted person who said "everything we do is
life-and-death" was way out of line, and not representative at all.
But what about real-life situations that meet the two-prong test?
Granted they are very rare, and most of us will never encounter them,
but the time to think about them is before they happen.


We are not the first people to consider these issues. As I said
before, this is well-traveled territory. Phil's 2 prong test pertains to
emergency actions on frequencies that one is not normally allowed to
use. It has nothing to do with the seizure of private property. That is
a topic over which the FCC has no authority or jurisdiction whatever.

--
Klystron

The moral of the story - good wishes have to be backed up by solid
support.
--

For me the moral of the story is that you need to match the training to
the individual. Surely someone with the qualifications you listed could
simply look throug a book for an hour or two and pass the test. Sending
someone that highly qualified to the sort of experience you mentioned
that is aimed at folks with no background at all is not apropriate IMHO.

Jerry

Phil Kane wrote in
:

She started to take the
three-session class offered by our radio club, using the ARRL's video
tapes which in my view are insipid.. Halfway through the second tape
she got up and left, declaiming "what the hell am I doing here" and
strode out of the room. She never became interested again and I'm not
about to press the issue.


It seems like your xyl did the same thing as my wife, only in the opposite
direction. She's every bit as intelligent as me, a quick study, and she has
expressed some interest, but says "I could never do the things that you
do", referring to the homebrewing and design I do. I keep telling her it
isn't like that at all for a majority of Hams, but so far she has not gone
for it. And likewise, I'm not going to press the issue! ;^)

- 73 de Mike N3LI -

"Phil Kane" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:18:18 EST, "Dee Flint"
wrote:

I don't think my path will be very useful to use as a tool. My second
husband dragged me to a class with the comment "Let's do this together".

My wife has been married before, and all three of her husbands (I am
the last and longest) were hams. She never was interested in ham
radio until a while back when she expressed an interest in being able
to "slide into the seat" when I did emergency hospital communications.
As an electrical power and instrumentation engineer of some 40 years'
experience, theory was no problem for her. She started to take the
three-session class offered by our radio club, using the ARRL's video
tapes which in my view are insipid.. Halfway through the second tape
she got up and left, declaiming "what the hell am I doing here" and
strode out of the room. She never became interested again and I'm not
about to press the issue.

The moral of the story - good wishes have to be backed up by solid
support.
--

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane


I suspect that what happened here is that for a woman of her abilities, the
material was presented too slowly and at the level of the lowest common
denominator and she couldn't stand it (too boring). She would probably have
done just fine with the Question & Answer book and it's brief explanations.

Dee, N8UZE