The following questions are asked to the amateur radio Emcomm community... how can we work together on this?
THE TYPICAL SCENARIO It is a dark and stormy night... You are an amateur radio operator, volunteering with a relief organization, for communication to set up shelters in a hurricane disaster. There has been no power in the area for 24 hours. There is no mobile phone service, and all the VHF/UHF repeaters and digipeaters in the area are out of range or out of service. It is 3AM. You are driving in your vehicle, half-way to your first shelter destination, making your way on back roads. The main highway is flooded. You use your chain saw to pass a downed tree. The road ahead looks worse. THE CALL The relief organization wants to call you now. They have new information since you left on your mission, and they now want to change your destination, to divert you to another shelter location not far from your route. They want you to give the workers at the other shelter a list of supplies that are on the way. They want you to check the shelter's status. They want to know where you are, and if you can possibly divert to the other shelter, so they won't need to send out yet another expedition to the other shelter. THE QUESTIONS How will the relief organization call you? How will they get the actual message to you? How will they know where to route the message to be sure it gets to you? How will they get urgent feedback from you? THE BACKGROUND In the past, Ham radio has generally been very good at a "One Way Traffic" situation. We can initiate messages. We can pull messages into the field using automatic email systems. It is easy to send messages initiated from the field. But, not as easy to call someone in the field, unless the operator in the field decides to actually initiate some sort of 2-way contact. CAN WE PUSH MESSAGES? What about pushing calls and messages to the field? What are the types of ham radio methods presently in place to call hams in the field when the ham in the field doesn't initiate the contact? What are the existing techniques, and how can these be improved? How is the ham in the field alerted to a call? Can we devise standard method(s) for routing Emcomm "push messages" to the field? Is ham radio HF viable for pushing messages? Can we make the call day or night, without prior notice? Bonnie VR2/KQ6XA P.S. In case you are wondering, the scenario above was taken from the Katrina Hurricane Disaster. .
