On Feb 29, 4:08 pm, (Dave Platt) wrote:
In article .
com,

N2EY wrote:

I don't think the FD person wanted the repeaters. He said they could
use the frequencies, not the repeaters. And the frequencies are public
property, after all. An amateur or club might own the repeater but
they don't own the frequencies.

I think there's a significant difference between a one-time emergency
use (if regular comms go down), and regular use of the frequencies as
a substitute for a properly-licensed/managed public service radio
allocation.

Agreed. The discussion in question was about use of amateur
frequencies in an emergency situation only.

As I understand it, this issue came up in a big way some decades
ago, after World War II. During the war, normal amateur-radio
communications were all shut down (for security reasons). The whole
RACES system was set up to allow specially-licensed stations (part of
civil-defense organizations) to use the ham-radio frequencies for
communication.

During WW2, the system was called WERS (Wartime Emergency Radio
Service). WERS used the prewar
112 and 224 MHz bands (2-1/2 and 1-1/4 meters) for local
communications. Post-war, WERS evolved into RACES.

Some years after that (after ham-radio communications were allowed
again) some controversy arose over the use of the ham frequencies.
From what I've heard, there were some public-safety organizations in
small towns (police and fire) which started using the ham frequencies
regularly... they got ham licenses and set themselves up as RACES
stations and tried to justify their full-time tactical use of the ham
band under the "RACES training and drill" rules.

Sounds plausible. The difference in cost of amateur gear (which could
be converted surplus or even homebrew) vs. commercial land-mobile VHF
equipment was probably one reason for it.

Hams complained. The FCC agreed with the complaints, deciding that
this was not an appropriate use of the ham frequencies, and instituted
new rules which strictly limit the frequency and duration of RACES
training drills that any given RACES organization can undertake
(basically, the equivalent of two long weekends per year).

And the need for a declared emergency to activate RACES.

Good points!

73 de Jim, N2EY