AF6AY wrote:

You'll pardon me for only picking one part of your article to discuss.

Then I would say that the old, out-dated stereotypical
"we are the heroes of disasters and emergencies" bragging
ought to be put away.

While I do agree that some of the material that comes out of disasters
is overblown, sometimes people do *earn* the right to brag. When folks
put a lot of hours into helping out in disasters they deserve recognition.

Why is it so bad to highlight a positive aspect of the hobby? It's not
the *only* aspect of the hobby, but hams still do help in disasters.
It's one of the few things that we do that the general public can
actually relate to. How do you get the general public excited about the
thrill of snagging a rare DX station or working your 100th country or
even building a radio? But people relate to cell phones that don't work
and hams' ability to communicate in those conditions. The fact that
cell phones are more reliable these days and hams' capabilities are not
needed as often doesn't diminish the message.


The public that has been IN such
events is aware of who helped them and who didn't.

They might have an idea what *agency* helped them. But the public has
no particular awareness of the infrastructure that facilitated that
help. They might understand that a Red Cross feeding vehicle provided
them a meal; they don't understand or care how that crew communicated
with their headquarters.

With Katrina, the Red Cross found itself with 200+ shelters and no
communications with them. Hams helped. Did the people in the shelters
know that? In most cases they did not, as there was no reason for them
to care how the communications were accomplished.

Don't get me wrong . . . I'm not saying that every ham needs to
participate in emergency communications, or that hams are the major
players in every disaster. But in spite of the great strides that have
been made in making the communications infrastructure more robust,
Mother Nature can still throw a sufficiently hard punch to cause severe
disruption, and ham radio operators do still play a role in such
situations. If the hobby can benefit from accurate, well-written
accounts of those activities, what's wrong with that? It's something
good that real people do with their real time and resources, and they
should get real recognition for it.