"William" wrote ...

I could be wrong, but I think only school teachers and the ARRL's W1AW
Operator are allowed to be paid while using amateur radio.
__________________________________________________ _________

I understand your point, but the intent of this section in the FCC rules was
to stop Ham radio from being used for commercial purposes, not to prohibit
emergency communications. Nothing in the rules prohibits use of this
equipment during an emergency by any licensed person. Or for that matter,
any person whatever. As I said, our Ham equipment is being used for
redundancy, so for all practical purposes, it will never be used for routine
communication -- other than testing to ensure it is working properly.

Arnie -









ary communications has a specialized function
for such purposes.


I agree that the specialized function it provides could have assisted
us --
and we too a long look at that when we were planning. But in reviewing
all
COAs, the cost-benefit just wasn't there. Since we are primarily in
contact
with civilian agencies (both state and federal) during emergencies, it
made
better sense to utilize the cilvilian HAM radio assets we had in place.
We
have plenty of standard military comms available other than MARS HF.
The
Amateur radio piece is for redundancy purposes -- not as a primary means
of
communication. For example, all of our VHF is military and of course
the
SAT and wireless is run on military net/satilites for security purposes.

Arnie -

Fair enough.