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