On Wed, 7 Nov 2012 11:15:07 EST, Channel Jumper
wrote:

And with the general mindset - most Amateur Radio Operators - at least a
majority of them only has a Technician Class License, hence they cannot
participate in ARES activities.

Our ARES/RACES group operations are mostly on VHF/UHF - both simplex
and through well-protected repeaters - where a Tech license holder is
fully permitted to operate. Only the link from the county EOC to the
State OEM is on HF and that only because the state bought the
equipment after the big storms of 2007 and gave it to us.

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest
Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon

e-mail: k2asp [at] arrl [dot] net

I think that the person who used the Woody Allen quote might have been the person who might have gotten it the most - had they read what I wrote.

If you can operate from at home - on your own station, without doing anything or making any effort - this is the point I was trying to make when I said all they want to do is talk on the radio... TALK - not travel, not spend their own money, no do anything to help.

People likes nets - they like to be a part of something.
Its called the Herding instinct - they want to be a part of a group or herd.

In an emergency - SIMPLEX is the prefered mode of communications.
YOU MUST EXPECT THAT WHEN YOU GET THERE, THERE WILL NOT BE ANYTHING THERE FOR YOU TO USE.

Just ask anyone that responded to Hurricaine Katrina in Louisiana or Mississippi...

When you show up for an emergency, you need to have more then just a walkie talkie and a pocket full of batteries.
You can't expect the disaster people to provide everything for you.

You need to have your own place to stay - the back of a van or pick up truck is mininum. Your own radio equipment, your own food - enough for about 10 days. Your own clothes and toiletries - including water, because you never know what you are going to find once you get there.

I just came from New York City on Monday, and all I can say is if you saw the filth and the destruction - its unimagineable.
I was telling the natural gas crew that was going in behind me - not to expect much and to post one person just to watch the truck while you work.
We had a real problem with looting..
Here we were trying to fix things to make things better and the people were stealing things to sell out of the back of my truck.
I went so far as to ask if they all had their tetnus shots and if they brought a gun. Once it gets dark out - there is no law - unless you have the national guardsmen in the area. There is no gasoline!

The world runs on gasoline.

If they get the opportunity - they will poke a hole in your gas tank and drain the gasoline out of your tank and steal it.
It was more like an apocalypse then anything else..

Just imagine 1 million people going out on your main street and taking a dump twice a day for a week.
That is what it was like, after the sewage treatment plant was overcome by the water and was overloaded and just spewed raw sewage into the sea water.

Even after going through the Holland Tunnel - Manhanttan was unlike anything that I had ever saw before. Yuck!

Long Island NY I can't even describe... It was that bad.

The tower crews were paid state rate which amounted to about $221 a hour to work on Sunday and about $180 to work Saturday to get the radio system back up and running in New Jersey.. They still couldn't get many volunteers... I saw more crews running out of New York then what was going in.

One fourth of all the cell towers were down - basically the people believed that they would not fail. When the storm hit - even the towers that had generators and batteries - worked until the batteries went dead and the generators ran out of fuel. The people in a panic - overloaded the system by all trying to talk on the remaining cell towers. Some 911 communications was offline - but they did not publish which towers no longer worked - to keep the looters away from those area's.

The other thing is with 8 million people without power - when their cell phone went dead, they had to way to recharge the batteries.
The stores were empty - because the shelves were bare.

The only thing left in the one store was some boxes of Dcon - rat poison.

There wasn't any electric to run the gas pumps for the stations that did still have gasoline.
Nobody ever expected that something like this could ever happen to them.
And because it wasn't in Louisiana or Mississippi - help came immediately...
Just because these people are more important then the people from Mississippi and Louisiana.

The only difference was these people were not as desperate as the people from the south during Hurricaine Katrina.

As for the coffee - coffee is made to disguise the taste of the treated water.
If you look historically - the worlds coffee supply was bought up by the USA during WW II and the worlds TEA supply was bought up by the British...

You get your water out of a untreated water pipe - spigot - and see how long it is before you get disentary..
There was no electric to run the water filtering plant, and the water intake for the plant was in the raw sewage.

The water buffalo with the portable water was the prefered source for Red Cross and Salvation Army.

The people who still had working automobiles - were able to leave - if they had enough gasoline. While the people who lost everything were stuck where they were.

They do not need your donations..
These fools that are loading up the trucks and sending supplies are only wasting their time.
As others has said - there is more then enough doughnuts and coffee to go around.
Once the people gets tired of drinking bottled water - they will start complaining - just like they did in Hurricaine Katrina.

The insurance companies have been contacted and they will all be getting their checks.
Some of those homes that were destroyed, were built as summer cottages, which were later converted into homes.
They were built in the wrong place and to the wrong standards.
Hopefully the insurance companies will realize this and will give these people the money to move somewhere else or not to build in the same location.
Or to build to a better standard then before.

I could go on and on....

Only the link from the county EOC to the
State OEM is on HF and that only because the state bought the
equipment after the big storms of 2007 and gave it to us.

That is the problem with HAMS today - many of them do not have the proper equipment - especially the Technician Class License Holder..
They believe that the repeaters are going to work and that everything is going to be provided for them.

The one local group called me on the phone and said - Hey, the county Xpeter is down, can you turn your friends repeater on so we can use it?
My answer was - when I said we needed help to repair the repeater, everyone told me - we have the county repeater, we don't need yours.
Then when the county tower went down in the storm - all of a sudden you need me. The problem was - I was 120 road miles away and the repeater was still broke.

The locals up there - doesn't have any of their own radio equipment, hence they run down to the EOC where the county gave them some repurposed hand held radios...

One guy has a HF radio, but the only thing he does on it is MARS - which technicially isn't a part of ARES or Amateur Radio. MARS is Military radio...

On Thu, 8 Nov 2012 12:51:12 EST, Channel Jumper
wrote:

[Selected excerpts]

If you can operate from at home - on your own station, without doing
anything or making any effort - this is the point I was trying to make
when I said all they want to do is talk on the radio... TALK - not
travel, not spend their own money, no do anything to help.

In an emergency - SIMPLEX is the prefered mode of communications.
YOU MUST EXPECT THAT WHEN YOU GET THERE, THERE WILL NOT BE ANYTHING
THERE FOR YOU TO USE.

There's all kinds of "deployment". I and folks like me cannot be
deployed "to the boonies" because of mobility or other problems and we
serve as well by manning pre-equipped command centers where the only
thing we need to have when we get there are our training and knowledge
and dedication.

In my ECC at a major medical center we do not accept "walk-ins"
because of legal and training problems. We cannot do "on the fly"
training of people to handle medical and hospital administrative
communications.

If you look historically - the worlds coffee supply was bought up by the
USA during WW II and the worlds TEA supply was bought up by the
British...

And at the present time, Coca Cola is the biggest purchaser of tea
worldwide - where do you think all that caffeine in Coke comes from?

I could go on and on....

And a close friend of mine (an Extra Class ham) was one of the medical
examiners handling the ID of the victims of the Twin Towers disasters.
They were required to sign NDAs so there are lots of unpublished
stories from that disaster. Things happen.

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

Member, Washington County, OR
Emergency Communications Team
for ARES/RACES and HEARTNET

Station Co-manager - W7PSV / K7PSV
Providence St. Vincent Medical Center
Disaster Communication Team