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 -