February 6, 2007
Steve,
Excellent show by George Ure on ham radio.
One thing I think you need to emphasize is that in an emergency, no one will be turned away, but... The people who have their licences have been on the air and know how to use the equipment. They know what the equipment can do, how to use it, and when to use it.
The hams into emergency preparedness (probably over 80% of active hams) practice, practice, practice. We have scheduled on-the-air meetings weekly for most every mode (method of communication) for most commonly used (and most useful) frequencies. The most dedicated run the meetings, called nets, for the rest of us. A newcomer should join every net feasible for a month or two until they get the "hang" of how different nets run. After that, maybe every month or two, or even once or twice a year is enough, just to stay in practice.
Once a year in June a continent-wide practice is held where people and ham radio clubs are encouraged to pack up and move their radio equipment outside and down the street to use improvised facilities and emergency power sources. We make it fun by trying to make as many contacts as possible over a 24-hour period in this improvised manner. Not to mention the cookouts and fellowship we enjoy while doing it. Then in November a list of all scores is published so we can see how we did. It is excellent practice for emergencies like hurricane Katrina. Or earthquakes. Or floods. Or whatever may come along.
Speaking of hurricane Katrina, hams were the communications backbone for weeks after Katrina, until the commercial services were restored. And we worked directly with the commercial communication services, too. After all, many of them are hams themselves. An example is the Telephone Pioneers, a service club of active and retired phone company personnel. See the web site for an example. The ham in the picture is N4DLE - Ron Howard (no, not THE Ron Howard...) who drove down from Birmingham and stayed for several weeks until some semblance of normalcy returned. Their primary service was to BellSouth employees and families, providing water, food, and shelter so that the active employees could concentrate on doing what was needed to restore phone service.
73 (best wishes in ham radio talk),
Michael
P.S. I'm an Internet listener because 6PM is an awkward time for me to listen, so I record it on the computer to listen later. I then share it with my brother (who got me hooked on your show and also a ham) because he doesn't always get to listen at that time either or shortwave propagation is poor, even if we are less than two hundred miles from the transmitter in Nashville. Believe it or not, basically we are too close, but not close enough!