Subject: Wrong Again, Len! (Communicator Power)
From: (William)
Date: 3/24/2004 5:26 AM Central Standard Time
Message-id:

"Arnie Macy" wrote in message
...
"William" wrote ...

And you've trained your volunteers to some standard?

Our "volunteers" are government employees who have this duty assigned to
them as part of their employment, and they are well trained in EM. All of
the angencies that support us have trained their volunteers via either
RACES
or ARES in EM. Of course, that training varies from jurisdiction to
jurisdiction, but there is little we can do to enforce our standards on
them.

I could be wrong, but I think only school teachers and the ARRL's W1AW
Operator are allowed to be paid while using amateur radio.

And for once you'd be right. Congratulations.

I agree that the specialized function it provides could have assisted us --

and we too a long look at that when we were planning. But in reviewing all
COAs, the cost-benefit just wasn't there. Since we are primarily in
contact
with civilian agencies (both state and federal) during emergencies, it made
better sense to utilize the cilvilian HAM radio assets we had in place. We
have plenty of standard military comms available other than MARS HF. The
Amateur radio piece is for redundancy purposes -- not as a primary means of
communication. For example, all of our VHF is military and of course the
SAT and wireless is run on military net/satilites for security purposes.

Fair enough.

It only took you three days.

Steve, K4YZ