In article , Win Heagy wrote:
Thanks for all the responses. (I especially liked..."And why do people
think they need to
communicate so urgently?"...and this from someone in
rec.radio.amateur.equipment! Usenet
always makes me smile. :-) )

Without wanting to start a political discussion while you have been relativly
ignored by terrorists, a situation that unfortunately will not continue,
we here in Israel have not. Every time there is a terrorist attack every
one calls all of their family and friends and asks if they are ok.

Even if there is no chance of them being in the attack itself, everyone
worries that this was the one day that their loved one went to the place
it happened.

We have 3 1/2 cell phone carriers here, one runs a mixed AMPS CDMA network,
one runs a D-AMPS (800mHz) and GSM 1800 mHz network and one runs a 900/1800
mHz network. The half is really a trunked radio service (MIRS) masquerading
as a cell phone network.

The landline network becomes clogged beyond useage after a few minutes,
the CDMA network crashes, and the other two become full, but eventualy
you can get through.

Ham radio still works.

Of course in absolute size, the attack on us are small, usually one or two
single bombers or car bombs. It is important to note that the 9/11 attacks
cut electrical power, telephone service, cell phone service and ham radio
repeaters.

However, we switched to GSM cell phones (the 900/1800 network) about 5
years ago because the cost of calling each other in our family was $.01
a minute. The HT's sit in a drawer. I still keep the batteries charged
in the ones that can hold a charge and will rebuild the old ones RSN
(real soon now).

As for land lines, we still keep ours, but for outgoing calls we switched
to a VoIP service from the TV cable company (not an internet service) that
costs about $15 a month with 2000 minutes of calls to regular landlines and
other cable phones. The regular land line costs about twice that for the
"line" with no free minutes.

I would like to note that while you saw the last several wars with Iraq
on CNN, we had to seal ourselves in chemical weapon proof rooms and were
asked by Presidents Bush to stay out of it. We also had to send our children
to school carrying gas masks.

Learn from what we did, it may happen to you. Be prepared to evacuate
and communicate when everything you think is normal stops working.
It's not just terror attacks that can happen, train wrecks, industrial
accidents and of course storms can affect you.

How many of you have heard the name Mel Tappan? Ok you both can put down
your hands. :-) He was the "guru" of the survivalist movement, the sincere
people who wanted to survive a nucelar war with the Soviet Union, not
the nuts that bombed the Murrah Building. He moved to the woods of Montanna.
Unfortunately he was on kidney dialysis. He was snowed in by a storm and
did not survive.

Maybe if he had another way of communitcating he'd be alive today.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (077)-424-1667 IL Fax: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838
Support the growing boycott of Google by radio users and hobbyists.
It's starting to work, Yahoo has surpassed Google.