[HCARC] Outage

[Bill Tynan]

Steve:

Good point about Amateur Radio being useful in emergencies, BUT, our Club 
repeater is good for about 20+ miles. It's not linked to any other repeaters 
in Fredericksburg, Boerne, San Antonio, Austin or anywhere. I understand 
that recent tests using 40 meters for extended coverage were met with little 
success do to QRM. In the daytime, 80 meters doesn't work and at night, it's 
full of QRM too. Even in the daytime 40 meters may skip out too much and it 
definitely does at night. The bottom line is that HF is NOT the answer.

As part of our association with the Red Cross, we are supposed to be able to 
communicate with various locations around the Hill Country.  We can probably 
do Fredericksburg, but not much else.

And, our repeater doesn't have emergency power, so it could be down just 
when it is needed.

If we are to meet our obligations to the Red Cross to provide area-wide 
communication for emergencies, we need to do a lot of upgrading. Another 
point is that, in this day and age, mere voice communication falls short of 
what is needed. Yes, we can do low bandwidth written communications using 
modes such as packet or PSK-31, but often pictures, such as Xrays, are 
needed, in medical situations.  HSMM, as some hams in Austin are doing, MAY 
be one answer.

That's why it's a shame that AMSAT could not come up with the money to get a 
communications package aboard one of the geostationary satellites, an 
apparent oppertunity they had a few years ago. That WOULD have been the 
answer. But it would have run about ten million dollars. No one was willing 
to put up that kind of money.

Just a few thoughts.

73,

Bill Tynan, W3XO/5

--------------------------------------------------
From: <sgriffin1 at stx.rr.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 09, 2013 7:54 PM
To: "Hcarc" <hcarc at mailman.qth.net>
Subject: [HCARC] Outage

>
> this afternoon and evening has been very interesting in communications 
> since this afternoon my cell phone hasn't been working properly every time 
> I was going to make a local call it was telling me that I was roaming. 
> when I got home from working at church try to use my landline and the 
> landline was not working, turned on my television and a television wasn't 
> working, I call Time Warner and the voicemail said that there was trouble 
> on the line, I called Sprint and I told me a fiber optic cable was cut. 
> the point I'm making now can you imagine if this was a disaster from a 
> storm all the communications would be knockdown, only amateur radio would 
> be the most reliable source of communication. it is really interesting how 
> much we rely on technology until it breaks.
> WD5ENH
> Steve
> Sent from my HTC smartphone on the Now Network from Sprint!
>
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