On Sun, 17 Aug 2014 21:00:57 EDT, (Bill
Horne W1AC) wrote:

On Sun, 17 Aug 2014 14:42:05 EDT, Dick Grady AC7EL wrote:
On Tue, 12 Aug 2014 17:49:12 EDT, Phil Kane wrote:
Part of the problem is they rely on GPS for location. GPS and the
mapping services ...

Most likely it's the mapping services that get it wrong.

I maintain a website www.lvhamtest.org which lists Amateur Radio VE
teams in southern Nevada ...

But I could not do this for team pages for Pahrump (population 35K).
The exams are located at the county emergency management building at
1510 Siri Lane. Most of the internet mapping sites do not know of
the existence of Siri Lane; they call this street Vagueros. One did
know of Siri Lane, but was 1/2 mile off. So I resorted to using
Windows Paint to draw a simple map for use on this team page. See
www.lvhamtest.org/p1.html.

Out of curiosity, I called up 1510 Siri Lane on Google Maps
(maps.google.com), and it shows "1510 E. Siri Ln" as being a point
inside an unmarked area bounded by Tan Way, Floyd St., Vaqueros St.,
and Kittyhawk Dr. in Pahrump, NV.

That's the wrong place for 1510 E. Siri Lane. On mapquest.com, I see
a similar situation. On Mapquest, when I click on "Satellite" to
superimpose a satellite image, I can see the Emergency Management
building at the northeast corner of what the map calls Kittyhawk and
Vaqueros. The map shows 1510 Siri one street north and 1/4 mile too
far east; there is no building at that place.

Now, of course in most cases that would be a mapmaker's anomaly, but I
can't help wondering what this means for APRS, especially during
post-disaster relief work, when hams from outside the affected area
are depending on GPS for every aspect of their work.

The other official emergency response agencies in the state and
adjacent counties most likely have already prepared detail directions
on how to find us. As for hams coming for post-disaster relief, if
they get lost, they will have to call our repeater for detailed
directions.

We hold our amateur exams in the Emergency Management building because
our ARES group is closely associated with them, and we can use it for
free. In January, 2007, the town experienced a town-wide power
failure, due to a break in the only power line supplying the town. It
took the power company all day to fix it. The communications systems
of the sheriff, fire dept, even the power company were AC powered and
quit. ARES was called out to provide communications using our
battery-operated radios and a solar-powered repeater.

As a consequence, the county realized how we can help them. The
county purchased 3 VHF/UHF and 2 HF amateur radios and antennas for
our use in their building. We hold our ARES meetings, VE exams, and
license study classes there. Several of us also have keys to the
building and security codes so we can open the building on weekends
when it is otherwise closed.

Dick Grady, AC7EL