Kim - excellent post, I'm impressed.

On Sun, 13 Jul 2003 11:16:22 -0500, "Kim W5TIT"
wrote:

1. A good radio amateur emergency communication operator recognizes the
limitations of skillet of volunteers in a local/regional/national net and
*deals* with it. In a communication emergency/disaster, the first need is
qualified individuals for service. The fact that one is an amateur radio
operator is not enough. Being active in local/regional/national training
and net participation is crucial to the proper training of individuals and
allows for exposure of those individuals to local operating practices.

Better yet is an emergency communications organization that recognizes
the varied skills of its members and institutes systems that utilize
those skills where they can do the most good. If a group of, say,
forty operators has ten accomplished CW operators and thirty ops whose
CW skills aren't up to snuff for emergency use, so be it. The thirty
ops who lack CW skills can still train to participate in voice comms,
conduct tactical comms on VHF, etc. If a person has a useful skill and
is willing to volunteer, you find a way for them to contribute. You
don't turn away volunteers, because when the time comes that you need
your team members, some will be themselves be victims of the disaster,
some will be unavailable because they're at work, some will need to
take care of family members, and so forth.

If
those operating practices don't include the CW mode, it is up to
participants in the operation/net to recognize that the best communication
mode is one in which everyone, a) is willing to learn and perform, and b) is
immediately familiar to all participants. Folks such as Dick and
Larry--IMHO--fail to display the attributes that help others recognize their
ability to size up current limitations and *deal* with it.

In golf, this is known as playing the ball where it lies. In cards,
it's called playing the hand you're dealt. In emergency management,
the buzzword is interoperability - and it's one of the things we hams
bring to the table that makes us valuable assets when the chips (or
the local communications systems) are down.

DIGRESSION MODE
ON: if the failure of participants to know and use CW is an issue, it is
certainly acceptable for those who desire CW to be used to make their wishes
known and to try and effect change through POSITIVE action. In the meantime
it behooves a good participant to fail to make enemies because things aren't
as they wish. DIGRESSION MODE OFF.

I don't think that's a digression at all. It's simply having good
leadership skills, and keeping a positive attitude...and your point is
well taken, in that there are some individuals whose attitude towards
their fellow hams is anything but positive - unfortunately.

2. A good radio amateur operator, who is familiar with EmCom, is also
familiar with the current trends in the service of emergency communication
provision. Again, one may not "like" the current trend but, to criticize
and be disgruntled about it hinders the efficacy of providing excellent
communication service.

There is nothing wrong with constructive criticism, so long as it is
done in a positive manner. For example, what if the current trend in
your area is for emergency management personnel to rely on cell phones
as a backup to their radio systems? I don't "like" that trend and will
certainly criticize it, immediately and as often as necessary to get
the point across. I will not, however, refer to said emergency
managers as "maroons" - especially not in a public forum!

DIGRESSION MODE ON: A good example would be the
very attitudes that we often see exhibited here in this newsgroup by folks
such as Dick and Larry. Now, they'll tell you that [paraphrasing here]
their actions in this newsgroup do not indicate anything about how they are
in real life.

Of course not. If they said to someone at a club meeting some of the
things they've said to people in this NG, they'd probably earn
themselves a punch in the nose. Now, I dunno about Dick, but Larry
likes his nose. He sends CW with his nose on the key while his left
hand is tuning and his right hand is writing in the logbook. :-)

I say to anyone here, that the actions in this newsgroup are
well known locally to your fellow amateurs. I cannot tell you how many
fellow hams I have met who know me only by what they have seen here in this
newsgroup--and first impression is everything. Most are "OK" with what they
see here by my opinions and some are not. The point is that most of us here
in this newsgroup are "offensive," in some way or another, to someone who
simply reads posts.

That's common sense, of course, because whatever side you take on an
issue, you're going to be in disagreement with the folks on the other
side. However, since common sense isn't really all that common, some
will exacerbate the situation, going beyond simply stating their
opinions and allow discussions to degenerate into name-calling,
personal attacks on the messenger instead of debating the message, and
other common fallacies that are as old as discussion boards on
landline BBS systems.

DIGRESSION MODE OFF. So, if someone exhibits offensive
behavior because of current trends in the service,

....or for any other reason, for that matter...

they will not be
*received* by local/regional/national participants as effective radio
amateur communicators. They may very well be, but if they are not received
and accepted as such, their effectiveness is compromised by their degree of
offensiveness to others. That would make people such as Dick and Larry
pretty darned ineffective as radio amateur emergency communicators.

Yep...nice package perhaps, but lousy presentation.

3. Going back to the "current trends" philosophy: if one cannot recognize
shifts and changes in current trends, their ability to participate in
effective radio amateur emergency communication is hindered--*IF* they
refuse (for whatever reason) to "get on board" with current practices.

Hindered? How about nonexistent?

If
the use of CW on emergency/disaster communication nets has diminished, it is
paramount to a qualified radio amateur emergency communicator to learn and
become familiar with whatever mode of operation is currently the "popular"
trend. It's that simple.

I was monitoring a MARS net a few years back, that was being conducted
in some rather lousy band conditions. One station tried to check into
this net using CW because the ops couldn't get through to the NCS
using SSB. The NCS told them that CW was not a valid operating mode
for checking into a MARS net. Draw your own conclusions.

4. I daresay anyone--not just radio amateur emergency communicators--who is
familiar with emergency/disaster communication, knows that the best mode of
operation is going to be one that most--preferably all--participants in the
communication process are familiar with--*regardless* of how well the mode
utilizes bandwidth or how well the mode can be implemented, etc.

This goes back to what I said earlier about interoperability. This
consideration became a major concern in the aftermath of the terrorist
attacks on September 11, 2001 and remains an important one in the mind
of any savvy emergency communicator or emergency manager. FEMA has a
publication for emergency managers dealing with amateur radio - I have
a copy in my personal library - and interoperability is one of the
things mentioned as a desirable asset that hams are able to provide.
It goes without saying that anything which compromises
interoperability is detrimental to the overall operation.

To try to
"force" the issue of CW onto radio amateurs may be admirable in some cases,
it is fatal to a good emergency/disaster communication effort *UNLESS* all
communication providers are "on board" with knowing and using CW
effectively.

Not necessarily. A CW net can be established for the purpose of moving
health and welfare traffic in and out of the affected area on HF,
while tactical communications for establishing shelters and doing
damage assessment are done on VHF FM. Obviously, the folks working VHF
FM don't need to know shinola about CW. They do, however, need to know
how to behave in a directed net, among other things.

In today's emergency/disaster communication "market" the CW
skill is little recognized and certainly not used in many circumstances.

Nevertheless, as both you and Arnie have already pointed out in this
NG, one should not discount any available means of communication. I'm
sure that if Arnie has a dozen CW ops around he's going to use them.
If, at the same time, he has a dozen no-code Techs or 5 WPM Generals
(like me for example) around he's going to use them too, but not as CW
ops. I'm not too good with CW, but I am pretty good at tactical comms.

DIGRESSION MODE ON: once the communication emergency/disaster operation is
under way, of course, CW nets for passing HW traffic are critical to the
implementation of effective transmission and delivery of messages to those
who would otherwise be "clogging" the resources of responders. It is at
*this* level that folks such as Dick and Larry should be recruiting
individuals. DIGRESSION MODE OFF.

OBSERVATION MODE ON: Unfortunately, Dick and Larry aren't recruiting
anyone; quite the opposite, in fact. When I first became an ARES
member, I was a Technician sans code. If I'd arrived at that ARES
meeting and found Dick and Larry in charge, I'd have been back out the
door so fast that the suction would have pulled half a dozen other
guys right out the door along with me. License class bigotry and
operating mode bigotry do no good for any facet of amateur radio,
least of all our emergency and public service communications groups.
OBSERVATION MODE OFF.

5. Current trends in the provision of emergency/disaster communication are
utilizing many modes. The political arguments are beginning to erode and
the stigma associated with utilizing all available radio services is
beginning to fade.

Having two skyscrapers collapsing around you while the police can't
talk to the fire department, which can't talk to the EMS personnel,
which can't talk to the Port Authority police, which can't talk to the
Feds, which can't even talk to each other, tends to do that for ya...

The recognition of this is limited to those above the
level of folks such as Dick and Larry, who are "stuck" in the world of CW so
obsessively that they cannot and will not accept what changes are taking
place and will continue to take place.

It's too bad that it took an incident resulting in the deaths of a few
thousand people for this recognition to happen, but sometimes I do
wonder if some people realize what they're saying. "CW is like
learning another language" for example...okay, fine, but what happens
if I get on the radio and tell the fire department that a pumper is
needed and such-and-such location because the ice storm just caused a
tree to collapse onto the roof of a school building, bringing down
power lines along with it, and now the school's on fire and kids are
trapped, and because I happen to like German and think everybody
should learn it, I make this report in German. Great if the fire
dispatcher speaks German. Not a good idea if she doesn't...oh, excuse
me, I mean, if she's a no-good-for-nothing who's too lazy to learn
German and is thus less qualified as a communicator than I am.

As has often been implied by
comments in this newsgroup: while "they" are stuck in their world, the rest
of the world is moving on and providing a great service--as one of the
tenets of amateur radio is realized.

I dunno if I'd go so far as to suggest that accomplished CW ops are
going to be left behind as the rest of the world moves on without
them, because there's nothing stopping someone who's already developed
good CW skills from learning additional skills useful in other
operating modes. The question is whether or not an individual is
prepared to put those skills to use when they're needed.

Our EOC has HF, VHF, and UHF gear, packet, a couple of repeaters,
emergency power from a diesel generator, and both a straight key and a
bug for CW ops to use. There's more than one radio for each. There's a
scanner. We also have SSTV capability, so that a ham in the field with
a digital camera and a laptop computer in his car can take pictures of
a disaster scene and transmit them back to the EOC over the air so
that officials there can see for themselves what's going on, rather
than having to haul everybody down to the scene for a first-hand look.
Of course, that means the ham in the field needs the digital camera
and needs to be able to power the laptop in the car (or once the
battery in the laptop runs down, goodbye to that capability). That
means adding an inverter to your jump kit if your laptop doesn't run
on 13.8 VDC. Some guys make me wonder if there is anything in their
jump kits other than a key, a QRP CW rig and a battery. I hope there
is, but the way some folks tell it there's only one operating mode and
CW is it. There's more to ham radio than that - if there wasn't, I for
one wouldn't be here - and there's a lot more to emergency and public
service communications than that. CW is a useful skill, but it isn't
the only useful skill.

There's loads of other not-so-ham-radio-related items that could be brought
up about how folks such as Dick and Larry have missed out; those that deal
with the leadership, recruitment, education, organizational, motivation, and
process of emergency communication.

But you good emergency/disaster communication folks already know them.

Yes we do, and I just mentioned a few of them. Thanks for recognizing
this fact, though.

73 DE John, KC2HMZ