Jerry wrote:

This is from the Sunday Pensacola News Journal:

Ham-radio operators

assist in rescue fforts

Tallahassee ham-radio operators guided emergency workers through daring
helicopter rescue :, Friday of 1 ,500 patients and staff from two New
Orleans hospitals besieged by darkness and gunfire.

Urged by rapidly rising water 8 feet deep in places and the growing reality
that New Orleans had become a drowning pool, the operators fashioned a
satellite receptor atop an 8-story building in downtown Tallahassee.

Three of them - Theo Titus, Gene Floyd and Bill Schmidt - boarded a
helicopter in Tallahassee on Wednesday and headed for New Orleans.

Atop the garage at Tulane University Hospital and Clinic, they set up a
generator-powered .. ham radio with a satellite uplink.

The men used that communication to direct pilots through the near-war zone
as they evacuated decimated hospitals. "There were a lot of heroes in this
operation," said operator Chuck Hall. Hall said the rescue was a small
victory, but bigger obstacles remain. Hospitals have to be rebuilt. Patients
have to get well, and New Orleans still faces months of recovery. "We had to
overcome some small hurdles today, but the big hurdles are in front of us.".


If THAT isn't in the thick of it, I really don't know WHAT you really want.
I recall a thread recently where you insisted that Amateur Radio had no
"real" part in emergency operations and that most such communications was
handled withOUT the help of Amateur Radio. Yada Yada, Yada. Much will be
done by MANY agencies and groups-even people lending backs and hands or a
mere handkerchief to the effort. *Some* may be by Morse; much of it not.
Some will handled by satellite and other data links as can be established
like the gentlemen in the article. I am seeing PLENTY of articles on TV and
radio about hams in the thick of the action--Even Larry King Live mentioned!
The crux of your angst was not the Morse issue, but the viability of Amateur
Radio itself as a vital part of our nation's communications infrastructure,
which it is HAS been since the beginning. Nothing puts the lie to your
ham-radio-is-not-vital-to-emergency-communications diatribe than this
horrific tragedy. NO! It is NOT the onlyone--no one's saying it is--but it
is certainly doing what it does best; serving the community and nation in
anyway it can. And there are thousands staying out of the way until the
phone rings, "Can YOU come and do......................."? Or relaying
messages into and out of NO and other stricken area. MOST amateurs that
respond, whether it be some heroic effort or merely letting a daughter know
that her Daddy is safe via HF radio will do so without expecting or
receiving so much as a quick "Thanks, man". They wouldn't have it any other
way!

J



Jerry:

What we have here are three individuals that: (1) two of them are either
too dumb or too lazy to have every gotten a ham license, thus they are
on the outside looking in, and they see what ham radio can do in
assisting in emergencies and they can't be a part of it so it really
chaps their butt, and (2) the other, who claims to be a ham is nothing
more than a do-nothing baby, who just crys and whines about what others
are doing because he is either too stupid or too lazy to do something
himself.