[FADCA] Anyone want to take exception to this?

Sat Jul 9 20:52:39 EDT 2005

Bud, you hit the situation on the head.

In Clay County in Orange Park I have Paclink in my mobile, a Telpac gateway 
that with no connection to the layered network as of yet.  A second one with 
9600 bps getting ready (I need to program a Tait Radio to make it 
operational and wire it all up) and I have an Airmail station in my car 
along with the Paclink equipped laptop and a SCS controller that has Pactor 
III.

In Green Cove Springs there is one ham with 1200 bps packet in a mobile as 
well as his home station and Airmail and Pactor II on HF in a mobile as well 
as a home station but uses the VHF Telpac Gateway in the manual mode - does 
not have Paclink.  A second HAM is working on a Telpac Gateway and is trying 
to get a PACTOR and AIRMAIL station on the air, but I don't think it will be 
a portable or mobile unit - I hope it will but I am not sure at this point.

In St. Johns county we have Earl's PMBO with ports on VHF and HF. On VHF he 
has a Telpac Gateway to his PMBO at 1200 bps. No mobile as far as I know. 
His PMBO has a port on the St. Augustine LAN frequency but he can not reach 
the St. Augustine ROSE switch. He can be reached from Jacksonville through 
X1J nodes.  He also has a port on the Clay County LAN Frequency and reaches 
my Telpac Gateway so we have some redundancy between the two counties.

In Duval County, Jacksonville, KC4OUA has a Telpac Gateway that can be 
reached through the X1J nodes and you reach it from Daytona through ROSE at 
St. Augustine to X1J Nodes that are linked to Jacksonville I believe.  I am 
not sure what KC4OUA has as far as mobile equipment.

There is absolutely NOTHING that is operational from Jacksonville to 
Pensacola and the Gulf until you get to Tampa as far as I can see.

Until the ECs and DECs start encouraging the development of Packlink 
portable stations and Telpac Gateways, and mobile or portable Airmail HF 
stations, as well as get together and develop an ARES (r) Northern Florida 
Emergency Communications Plan that encourages the development of more 
efficient and capable digital communications there won't be much development 
as the people who think they are the SECTION officials don't understand 
Winlink, Don't Have any Plans to try to encourage it or even understand it. 
The Northern Florida Section Emergency Coordinator, while he is a great guy 
and I like him, is not inclined to take any steps into the 21st century (he 
did not even read all the stuff I have sent him over the last year and did 
not even try to respond to a message I sent him and he received in an Email 
through the Winlink system - he said he did not know he could reply to the 
message using his Email client by sending a response!. (Email is Email!)

Any development that occurs in the Northern Florida Section will have to 
come for individuals, ECs and DECs.  It is a poor state of affairs.

I hate to say it, with the exception of Earl in St. Johns, Bill in Duval , 
and Don and I in Clay, we have not even begun to have any real development 
and capability on a county Emergency Management level in the Northern 
Florida Section except for what you have done in Seminole County, Bud.

Russ

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "bud thompson" <budt at cfl.rr.com>
To: <fadca at mailman.qth.net>
Cc: "DICK K4FUY SEM CO EC" <dickfess at juno.com>; "Fred KF4VRS VOL EC" 
<kf4vrs at hotmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, July 09, 2005 6:58 PM
Subject: [FADCA] Anyone want to take exception to this?

> FADCA -  Anyone want to take exception to this? (I would welcome that, but 
> I
> doubt anyone will!)
>
> The Winlink 2000 (WL2K) coordinator Steve, K4CJX, asked me a poignant
> question regarding 'readiness' for WL2K e-mail over ham radio to support
> Dennis, hurricanes, etc.. in Florida.  Read Steve's question and my
> response.
>
> bud
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "K4CJX" <k4cjx at comcast.net>
> To: "'bud thompson'" <budt at cfl.rr.com>; <N5SN-8 at Winlink.org>
> Sent: Saturday, July 09, 2005 13:43
> Subject: RE: bud and Sally's Hurricane Preparedness - Test#1
>
>
>> Bud,
>>
>> How is the Winlink system usage for the potential stricken area?
>>
>> Steve
>>
>
> Hi, Steve-
>
> Hard to tell - but the only thing WL2K in an organized fashion in the 
> state
> are the four Full-featured PMBOs.
>
> We still don't have much ARES/RACES WL2K activity anywhere in the state.
> The Seminole County group I work with is the most promising, and it could
> not get five people mobilized in three hours ready to go with Paclink 
> and/or
> Airmail.  It is really slow coming.
>
> I don't know what it is going to take to get a fire built under anyone 
> from
> an organized standpoint.  I'm concentrating on getting the packet network
> filled in and adding support for Telpac nodes.  That is coming along at a
> snail's pace but much more promising than ARES/RACES folks getting on
> Paclink en masse.  I just picked up two new helpers in the past five weeks
> who are really into technical stuff, including LINUX.  There is more
> activity in the networking group to get LINUX FPAC working (to replace DOS
> FPAC) than any other activity.  We are holding another FADCA Technical
> Conference in Tampa August 20th.  Much of that will be LINUX FPAC status 
> and
> higher tech stuff than the one I set up April 30th. At least I don't have 
> to
> organize that one.. just attend and make a couple of presentations.
>
> I should have all my immediate networking tasks finished by the middle of
> August - which will put the network from Jacksonville through to Melbourne
> in good shape along the east coast, much of the backbones 9.6kb.  Then 
> I'll
> probably start another campaign to get more ARES leaders (ECs) fired up to
> get their folks on Paclink.  Once the Melbourne switch is back up I'll
> probably give a club meeting program there.
>
> I believe the most rewarding advance will come from getting a served 
> agency
> or two fired up to be able to use E-Mail over Ham radio - and if such 
> served
> agency(s) would supply their own ham radio Paclink AGW station in their
> office/mobile van, etc. the ECs would find people to support that.  We 
> will
> likely get that far with the new Altamont City EOC as we start putting ham
> gear into it in August.
>
> Meanwhile 90% of the ARES/RACES planning here is to simply have hams with
> 2M voice radios assigned to shelters to handle NTS messaging between the
> shelters and the EOC.
>
> Really discouraging that folks seem so comfortable staying in the middle
> ages.
>
> later
> bud
>
>
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