I had the unique opportunity to explain how Amateur Radio works one day when I called the Dog Warden and had him come to my house because the neighbors dogs were doing property damage to my vegetable garden.

When the Dog Warden asked, how far can you talk on your antenna's?
I replied - half way around the world.

When he asked how much power am I allowed to use - I said up to 1500 WATTS

When he asked how much power do I use - I said 100 watts or less...

When he asked how far have I talked - I showed him my electronic log and my many contacts to places such as Australia, Neatherlands, Germany, Brazil, Alaska, Hawaii, Spain etc...

The next question is - how can you talk to so many different people?
He was talking about the language barrier.

My reply was - most of those people are educated and that they can speak better English then most people living in the USA today.

When he asked which channel I talked on, I explained to him how we use bands - such as 10 / 20 / 40 / 80 and 160 meters...

His reply was that he didn't need to know how his radio worked, all he needed to know is how to press the push to talk button and talk - the repeaters does all the work.

Its hard to sell someone on Amateur Radio when they already have a radio that works - such as Cell Phones, Public Service frequencies etc...

But when those modes refuse to work - such as the storms that hit Virginia the other day - those very same people can easily be convinced that they could really benefit by alternate sources of communications.

You blow down the states or the counties tower and they can switch to another tower. You blow down all of the towers and you have no communications, especially when the back up batteries dies and the generator runs out of fuel.

Amateur Radio - by nature - usually is not sponsored by the government, most hams uses their own time, talents, equipment and towers to build their own repeaters, and it is easier for a couple of people or a club to restore services of one repeater - then a government agency to restore services to a half dozen towers - when the roads are blocked by trees and debris and they have their own issues to take care of before they can even leave their homes to go fix what is broke - especially after a tornado or hurricaine or a “Derecho,”