Nate -
You did a great job of answering the question I posed to Eric before
I read this. Parking a standby itinerant repeater on a pair of
frequencies that are temporarily down due to the emergency does make
a lot of sense. Hopefully this discussion will spark some inter-
association cooperation and exercises. In an emergency, hams in the
area may have serious problems of their own that demand attention and
the solution to communication problems will be resolved by hams from
neighboring areas who move their time, talent, and equipment in just
as volunteer firemen "move up" to man vacant fire stations while the
local firefighters are busy elsewhere.
Your comments about preparedness are right on the mark. I took the
trouble to become a "certified" planner in connection with my NYSDOT
career but I know a lot of other planners who ought to be
"certified" (and not with the AICP designation). A week or so ago, I
had almost decided to forget about providing a standby repeater of
some sort in my Sprinter "ARK" but this discussion has revived my
plans and I'm very appreciative of the response from all you experts.
My telecommunications background goes back over fifty years in the
telephone business where I worked on a lot of magneto "crank" phones
and step-by-step dial systems and I've only been a ham since January
when some other hams scoffed at my idea of furnishing a GMRS repeater
that volunteers who were not hams but had access to some bubble-pack
hand-helds could use. You folks have come up with a lot of great
ideas that I plan to discuss with the repeater coordinators and I
need all the help I can get. Thank you all!
Paul W2ARK
On May 8, 2006, at 8:51 PM, Nate Duehr wrote:
>
> We can't even get real emergency groups around here to use STANDARD
> OFFSET UHF repeaters most of the time.
>
> Color me VERY skeptical that any more than a few people will ever
> truly
> use a wide-split portable VHF repeater in a true emergency.
>
> Overloaded, stressed out people, don't respond well to "dig out your
> manual and figure out how to program in a 2.655 split repeater".
> And a
> large number of people wouldn't or couldn't -- sad, but true.
>
> Plopping a "simplex repeater" or even a "backup real repeater" on the
> output of a dead repeater affected by the emergency... (no power or
> whatever other damage it suffered)...
>
> ... right on the regular old coordinated pair... (once you know the
> real
> repeater there is dead and down for the count)...
>
> ... is SO much more likely to be effective -- that anything else pales
> by way of comparison.
>
> We hams "over-engineer" this stuff, constantly.
>
> Some of the silly stuff I've watched so-called "emergency" planners
> come
> up with over the years is amazing. NONE of it can be reasonably
> done in
> a REAL emergency, and isn't, usually.
>
> (Ex: Yeah, everyone who hasn't used packet in 10 years is all of a
> sudden going to fire up the Statewide backbone, put a couple more
> BBS's
> on the air, and everyone's going to remember how to set up their user
> stations perfectly and no one's going to hog the channel or interfere
> with anyone else... Packet always comes up as one of the "big answers"
> ES people seem to like, and NEVER EVER really USE. We had a 1200-baud
> digital-regenerative repeater on the air from a site that had 5W
> outdoor
> 150+ mile coverage, and it was on the air for 5 or more years.
> Know how
> many users it had? Maybe 5. Was it the perfect answer to the "hidden
> node" syndrome of a busy packet channel? Yes. Want to know why ARES
> didn't use it the two times in that 5 years they fired up packet for a
> real emergency? PRIVACY CONCERNS! They could make the hops they
> needed
> DIRECT so there the repeater sat, unused.)
>
> The reality of emergencies is -- real emergencies -- people will
> congregate on frequencies they're used to using -- even if just on the
> output frequency -- and by putting something THERE in a REAL
> emergency,
> it is 100% more likely to be effective and USED than anything else.
>
> In fact, that's my experience... the gaggle of hams wanders around
> kerchunking until they find the best coverage real repeater on the air
> that covers the affected emergency area, and then that repeater
> instantly becomes the busiest repeater around. No matter if it's the
> worst-engineered, or the best... if it's on the air when the
> big-bad-high-sites are down, and it covers the affected area --
> whoever
> built it better hope it has the ability to handle 100% duty-cycle.
>
> Just common sense. People are going to use what they're used to, so
> don't over-engineer an "emergency" solution -- build one that
> capitalizes on people's repetitive and habitual nature. Build
> emergency
> RF plans SIMPLER not more complex.
>
> If I walked up to any member of ARES/RACES in Colorado and said,
> "Without looking, can you tell me the Statewide Emergency & Special
> Event VHF Frequency Pairs?"... they'd stare at me like I was insane.
> Anyone here think a majority of the so-called "best trained" emergency
> communicators in the State would know them, from memory?? Have them
> programmed in all their radios??? Even know they exist????
>
> "Anyone have the 220 MHz E&SE pair for Colorado memorized?" "440
> MHz??"
>
> Yeah, right. ;-)
>
> It might be an interesting experiment to try on a few ARES nets this
> week... heh heh. I could be wrong.
>
> Try this one:
>
> "What's the national simplex calling frequency?"
>
> Yep, they'd ALL get that one... I guarantee it. Probably for multiple
> bands. Maybe even for different modes!
>
> Humbug, I say to E&SE pairs. For real big emergencies there's better
> ways. For emergencies, I don't find them all that useful -- Just plan
> to be on the repeater output until it comes back on the air. People
> know where everyone else is, and they can pass around info about what
> fixed location repeaters are still on the air.
>
> For SPECIAL EVENTS -- E&SE Pairs are GREAT! Little portable repeaters
> can be set up and torn down without any worry they're going to bother
> another repeater nearby. That's good stuff.
>
> If we have to call them "Emergency" AND Special Event to politically
> keep the pairs open for events -- that's a different issue, and I'd
> say
> DEFINITELY DO IT. But for real emergencies, people are not going
> to use
> them -- really. They never do.
>
> Nate WY0X
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
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