"Arnie Macy" wrote in message ...
"William" wrote ...

Wow. Warms the heart to see such humanity on the group.

Apparently you've never been on the end of a personal attack from Leonard.
I have. He deserves a lot harsher language than I have ever sent his way.

Perhaps. Hang in there with your semi-civil tongue. We may yet get
to civil debate.

It would certainly be
an improvement over what we've seen here from you in the past.

Arn, ever see what Steve posts?

Sure. They are usually in response to a first strike from Leonard. What's
your point?

No, no, no. You're just enabling Steve with such a an attitude.

Others in here appear to be able to withstand a "first strike" from
Len. Let's use you as an example. You said above that "He deserves a
lot harsher language than I have ever sent his way." So why didn't
you?

Do you have self-control? Self-respect?

Are you emotionally balanced?

Did Mark Morgan "deserve a lot harsher language than I have ever sent
his way?"

BTW, we put our Amateur Radio gear on-line for the first time in the
Mobile
Incident Command Center the other day.

But 9/11 was more than 2.5 years ago.

We've had plenty of comms ability since then, but put the gear in the MICP
as a means of improvement. Improvement of comms systems is a good thing,
right William?

Always.

First contact was via CW with a
station in Iowa.

Was it Iowa that you needed to contact? I'm trying to think what an
East Coast military installation might need with Iowa? Looking for
obsolete Collins parts?

Conditions for SSB were just not up to par.

For a contact with Iowa? Did you try a band higher? Did you try a
band lower? Again, what was the reason Iowa was needed for a contact?

We tested the gear on ALL bands (and both modes). And Iowa was the place we
happened to contact first.

And that is the amateur's attitude to communications. I flipped on
the radio and talked to Costa Rica! Everythings great, I got
Emergency Comms!

If I need to contact FEMA via HF in another
state (including IOWA) I think I have proven that it can be done by this
test. And that, after all, was the purpose to begin with.

I don't. The true measure of a test is the test. As an IG augmentee,
I lay down a card, and Capt Soso reads it and say, "I can do that."

Do I mark down 100% on his say so, or do I say, "So let me see you do
it, Capt Soso."

We just love
having all those tools in our communications kit.

Wow. Me too.

We also tested our state of the art sat-phone/VTCs and wireless VOIP
network. They worked flawlessly -- what wonderful pieces of gear. We
are
now completely wireless (including phone lines) so we can go wherever
needed.

So you really didn't need to contact Iowa with amateur radio. I was
wondering about that.

Sure we did. The Ham gear is for redundancy.

Sort of. It's there for when your primary and secondary gear doesn't
do what its supposed to do. You still have a mission, and it's not
talking to a ham in Iowa.

That's why we have it. A
test of it's HF capability was important. Test complete, test successful.

In other words, you tested that the radio worked. You could have done
that with a dummy load and not wasted that Iowa ham's time.

Next time you inadvertantly contact an amateur in another state, ask
him to phone patch you through to that state's EMA or State Police.
That at least would be worth noting.

21st Century comms at its best -- which means a mixture of the old
and new together to give us the strongest redundancy possible.

Strong redundancy equals GAO audits. They don't like redundancy even
if it means survivability. They'd rather have the money spent on food
stamps and WIC.

Strong redundancy equals uninterrupted communications in an emergency. The
GAO cares not as long as we spend the money appropriately. Since the
purchases were pre-approved, I guess we already did that.

Which model HF radio did you get?

Arnie, its always great to read one of you posts. Thanks for stopping
in.

And you too William.

Arnie -