FWIW I voted yes. Who says the event has to be world wide? Who is to say the local hospital lost communications, the local village or town? You may only need to talk to the community over that has internet or phone service along with power. If they have a repeater why can't you use it? Do you really need HF to talk to the neighbors? It seems like more and more we talk to everyone other than our neighbors on the phone and radio. If the local DStar system for me is across the Delaware Bay and in a different ARRL section and state why doesn't that count? It's 34 miles away, people make FD contacts on HF less than that. It's field day, all modes, frequencies and equipment should count as a contact and only a point a piece. Just get out and operate, and ditch them silly "bonus points". Do you get a "bonus" in a disaster? Carl, KB1EJH
--- On Mon, 4/12/10, J. Moen <[email protected]> wrote: From: J. Moen <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] New poll for dstar_digital To: [email protected] Date: Monday, April 12, 2010, 6:49 PM This note changed my mind. I was against allowing repeaters until I read it. I now think ARRL should allow QSOs via repeaters, as long as 1) they are not powered by mains (generators, batteries etc. ok), and 2) they involve only RF. So emergency-powered repeaters could use non-mains-powered RF links to other emergency-powered repeaters. I completelty agree with the sentiment in the post by Chris K4FH: "I look at Field Day as a way to test and practice our ability to communicate with minimal infrastructure." We all know mains-connected and internet-connected repeaters will have limited usefulness in many types of disasters, which is why those types of radios have traditionally been excluded from Field Day competition. Jim - K6JM ----- Original Message ----- From: Woodrick, Ed To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, April 12, 2010 1:57 PM Subject: RE: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] New poll for dstar_digital First, in the section that you cut, the reason for Field Day is to test our Emergency Preparedness. It’s not to make points. The use of repeaters, by many, is driven by the fact that repeaters are a part of the Emergency Response plans for many organizations. I could maybe see excluding fixed location repeaters, but portable repeaters are a big part of our Emergency Communications plans, there should be no reason to preclude their use. The setup and operation of most Field Day sites is indeed similar to something that you might find as an emergency response in Haiti or rural areas of Chile, but it has very little to with operations that you would find throughout most of the US. Today’s Field Day is more like an Emergency Response that Amateurs would have used in 1950, than one that we would have used in the last 40 years. Ed WA4YIH
