[MRIC] I am done.

[brettham at aol.com]

Pat,

Since I make my livelihood in radio communications, I am compelled to 
defend my reputation against your condescending remarks regarding my 
Public Service communications experience, “boys with toys” comment, and 
my ego.

Almost 20 years ago I developed the prototype for the very first 
PC-based dispatch console for M/A-COM (then GE). For 20 years I was 
responsible for the design and/or development for a variety of data 
communications and telecommunications equipment include fiber optic, 
encryption, satellite routers, and radio communications systems for 
military test flight mission control centers, among others. I am an 
expert in several dozen ISO and Internet data communications protocols 
having either developed software implementations, or conformance test 
procedures for them.

After 9-11-2001 I choose to give up my engineering career and take a 
drastic cut in pay to change my career to Public Safety radio system 
maintenance to do my part to serve first responders and the public at 
large. For several years I was responsible for all maintenance on a 
9-site 800 MHZ tri-county Motorola trunking system. For the past 2 
years I have been responsible for a state-of-the-art voice over IP 
M/A-COM interoperability radio system that ties together 12 different 
jurisdictions’ 911 dispatch centers for regional interoperability, and 
provides 800 MHz coverage over 9 counties. I possess the highest level 
FCC commercial radio license (GROL) and the highest level FCC Amateur 
Radio license (Extra) and am well respected throughout much of the 
state by many Public Safety communications officials for my 
capabilities, integrity and work ethic.

Six years ago I re-established a RACES organization in Talbot County 
and shortly thereafter was activated to set up communication from 3 Red 
Cross shelters to the EOC during hurricane Isabel. The next year, via 
my director, I applied for, and received, a grant for new RACES 
equipment. Under my direction, we installed 4 hardline feeds from our 
RACES radio room at the EOC, to new antenna we installed on the tower 
out back. The installation met professional grounding and lightening 
protection standards and we completed the work all by ourselves (except 
the use of a lift). We also implemented the first Emergency 
Communications Winlink2000 PMBO (email server) in Maryland, which 
operated at the highest speed of any Winlink2000 connection in 
Maryland. In fact, I can send email from my own personal truck, using 
my own laptop and HF radio, to Internet connections around the world. 
Can you do that? Have you ever implemented a Winlink system, anywhere? 
According to the Winlink administrator, your call sign has never been 
used on Winlink.

Our RACES organization in Talbot County is well integrated into the 
county emergency operation plans. I attend the emergency planning 
meetings with other county agencies, and our RACES is deployed for most 
of the day during the state-wide Pandemic Exercise every year, and 
other regional drills such as the Eastern Shore Evacuation exercise to 
provide communications to the health department, hospital, community 
center and other sites around the county. Through the planning 
committee meetings and exercises, our RACES group has a good working 
relationship with the health department, hospital, law enforcement and 
many county agencies.

The other RACES Officers (ROs) that attend the MRIC meetings do not 
know about all my experience, because it does not matter at MRIC. If I 
had such an ego I would have shared this information a long time ago. 
What is important, is that we debate the technical pros and cons of 
different technical interoperability solutions, and that the best 
solution is selected, regardless of how much experience the RO has that 
originated the proposal. It is also important that we build consensus 
so that the committee’s recommendations are voluntarily adopted and 
implemented by all jurisdictions so that we can all communicate during 
an emergency. In the very first MRIC meeting, I proposed a method of 
fairly dividing VHF frequencies among the jurisdictions, that was voted 
down in favor of coordinating existing frequencies using a list. In the 
November2007 meeting, my first choice for a data network was D-STAR but 
that was quickly discounted for good reasons given by others. It is not 
important that my ideas get adopted at MRIC, or your ideas, or someone 
else’s ideas, but that we build consensus on what the group thinks is 
the best solution. And that everyone buy in to the recommendation. 
Otherwise, we cannot communicate. Consensus is built by sitting across 
the table from each other and engaging in discussion and debate in an 
organic fashion to address all technical objections until the outcome 
is unanimous. This usually can’t be done via email, or by giving your 
vote to another jurisdiction prior to the meeting. If I asked someone a 
year ago whether or not they thought it was possible for a committee of 
RACES Officers to agree on:
1) Coordinating frequencies state-wide;
2) Agreeing to use ICS-213 message forms instead of Radiograms;
3) Establishing an HF Voice Net;
4) Establish a state-wide data net and agree on one mode;

I do not think anyone would have thought all that would be accomplished 
in a single year after meeting for just 16 hours. And yet we did 
accomplish all that. It is a credit to the spirit of cooperation that 
exists in the ROs that attend MRIC. It is unfortunate that you cannot 
accept MRICs decisions, and try to get your way by manipulating 
procedures.

The problem we now have at MRIC, is not related to quorum, attendance, 
proxy voting, or any other procedural issue. This is proven by the 
tremendous amount of work we accomplished at the two preceding MRIC 
meetings where the Maryland RACES HF Voice Net was unanimously 
approved, and the Maryland RACES Data Net (MRDN) using Winlink was 
unanimously approved. In fact, one of the best meetings I have ever 
attended in my life, was the November 2007 MRIC meeting where we 
debated all the different data modes, NVIS, etc, which is saying a lot 
considering I have attended many national and international 
telecommunications standards meetings. We didn’t have a single debate 
on procedural issues, because we all acted like adults trying to reach 
unanimous consensus, so it wasn’t necessary.

In my view, the problem we have at MRIC is with you and Joe 
Krysztoforski disrupting our meetings. This time last year, the MRIC 
members agreed to discuss data modes at the November 2007 meeting, and 
we listed all the modes (protocols) that should be discussed. You and 
Joe did not attend the November meeting, but the minutes of the meeting 
indicated Winlink2000 was going to be the most likely choice, and that 
it would be voted on at the January 2008 meeting. Everyone was 
encouraged to go back to their organizations, discuss it with their 
local RACES operators and Emergency Managers, and raise any concerns 
via the email reflector so they could be dealt with prior to the 
January meeting vote. You had 2 months to voice your opposition to 
Winlink before the vote, and you and Joe said nothing to me, or to the 
group. Also, neither of you attended the January meeting or send 
representatives from your organizations. Then, when Winlink was 
approved in January (as everyone expected), still we heard no 
opposition from you or Joe. The first opposition we heard from you 
since the debate began in November, was 6 months and 3 MRIC meetings 
later, just this past Saturday. At the MRIC meeting Saturday you raised 
several procedural issues you wanted to vote on, all of which were 
defeated. Why can’t you accept that? During the debate that lasted well 
over an hour, neither you nor Joe gave us one single technical reason 
why we should not have adopted Winlink. You also did not propose a 
single technical alternative. The only thing you accomplished was in 
disrupting the meeting, and preventing us from getting our work done.

Now we have no guidance material for those ROs that were interested in 
seeking funding for Winlink this year. Having had to specify Winlink 
equipment for my grant application, I can tell you that it would have 
saved me dozens of hours of research if I had such guidance material 
available to me. Also, I know there is money available for hospitals to 
install Amateur Radio equipment, but now we have no guidance, so they 
may each end up with different equipment, or not the optimal equipment 
we would have wanted, or an incomplete list missing some 
interconnection cables, as often happens. Had we completed our work, we 
could have referred them to the EOC equipment list.

Also, this summer we could have created training videos and 
configuration settings for those implementing Winlink, to walk the user 
through configuring the dozen or so radio settings including filter and 
options settings, to make it idiot proof. Now, if anyone does move 
forward this year, they will likely have different equipment, making 
support much more difficult, and remote troubleshooting the RF side 
impossible. During my installation, I encountered half a dozen RF 
problems, mostly wrong radio settings, that took me a long time to 
figure out. We could have eliminated this learning curve for others. 
And we eliminated the possibility of standardizing on a single 
configuration so that if we need to pull in volunteers from other 
jurisdictions, they would be able to operate the equipment.

You and Joe Krysztoforski have severely affected our ability to move 
forward in a cohesive fashion with the MRDN Winlink deployment this 
year, and judging by comments to me from half-a-dozen attendees, you 
may have come close to killing MRIC altogether. I can’t believe anyone 
would want to attend another meeting like we had this past Saturday. I 
left my house at 7 AM and didn't get home until 8 PM, and there are 
others that have to drive further than I. It was 180 degrees opposite 
of the two preceding meetings where you and Joe where not there.

We don’t need to change our procedures or get the Emergency Management 
Agency involved in changing our charter. What we need is to put an end 
to the destructive behavior from you and Joe Krysztoforski. I am done 
trying to accommodate you and Joe. I will not be responding to your 
email in the future. Please do not assume by my silence that I agree 
with you.

Brett Hammond
Chairman, MRIC


-----Original Message-----
From: wb0egr <wb0egr at comcast.net>
To: MRIC at mailman.qth.net
Sent: Tue, 29 Apr 2008 11:33 pm
Subject: Re: [MRIC] Minutes for 4-26-08


Brett,

The point is, just because you did not think it made sense to add 
information about other digital modes, does not mean you are correct. 
What some others consider to be important and relevant information 
about Winlink2000 that has not yet been voiced, was left out because 
you, not MRIC, chose to discount what I and the Baltimore County RO had 
to say about the matter. Just because a motion was passed at a previous 
meeting to accept this or that, does not automatically shut the door to 
additional discussion on it or alternatives at future meetings.

Yes, you might disagree with me on this, and you might even say that I 
am trying to be argumentative or trying to derail the process (which I 
am not), but in reality all I, and for that matter the Baltimore County 
RO are trying to do is bring a reality check into play, be reasonable 
about what is and what is not affordable when it comes to spending 
money especially on high ticket items in these tight budgetary times, 
and keep MRIC from appearing to be just another group of "boys with 
toys" - especially expensive toys like Winlink2000, and to maintain our 
credibility.

I personally have nothing against Winlink2000. However, my thirty-five 
plus years of experience in amateur radio public service communications 
in various parts of the United States has taught me to be fairly 
conservative and to only ask for well established technologies to be 
embraced by those we serve. Winlink2000 is, in my opinion, still in 
it's "toddler stage" of development, and until it reaches its maturity 
and becomes an affordable and bulletproof technology it should not 
become a recommended technology to the Emergency Managers Association 
for full deployment when there are other digital methods of 
demonstrated reliability that can be deployed with a significantly less 
expenditure of tight monies.

You appear to believe that we should only present the good about a 
single technology to the Emergency Managers Association. I and others 
believe that we should present the good, and the not-so good and the 
bad information to the Emergency Managers Association by using full 
disclosure. Hence my insistence on Saturday that you capture not only 
my thoughts about the "in an ideal world" as you described it 
deployment of Winlink2000, but also others who expressed an opinion 
that did not agree with yours. Yes, we could have given you a pie in 
the sky ideal concept for deployment of Winlink2000 in our 
jurisdictions, but to us that would have been unrealistic and 
demonstrated not only to the Emergency Managers Association, but to our 
Emergency Mangers as well, our irresponsibility on the matter because 
we know what is and is not realistic for RACES to ask for in terms of 
funding and that the return on the monies allocated for RACES capital 
purchases in our jurisdictions will be real from the get go.

Yes, Winlink2000 can support the exchange of e-mail in the event of an 
internet outage in Maryland. However, Winlink2000 is still plagued by 
many bugs and e-mail is not always delivered in a timely manner 
according to the postings I have seen and continue to see in various 
Yahoo Groups for users and supporters of Winlink2000. Winlink2000 has 
the potential, I repeat, the potential to be of major benefit to our 
served clients and Emergency Management Jurisdictions WHEN it has 
matured and become as reliable as other methods of data exchange. Yes, 
I know that boaters have been using a commercial version of Winlink2000 
for several years now, but that is really their only affordable option 
at the moment to stay connected via e-mail. It is NOT our only option 
for ensuring inter-jurisdictional communications and data exchange in 
times of communication crisis. Hence, we should not put "all of our 
apples into one basket" by solely recommending Winlink2000 and ignoring 
all other digital methods.

As a final thought in this, please do not think that I am trying to 
challenge you or your intent. I do believe that your intent is correct. 
However, as the old saying goes, "there is more than one way to skin a 
cat" applies to MRIC also. Just because you are the Chairman does not 
mean that you are the head of MRIC nor does it mean that you get to 
decide which way MRIC will go while you are Chairman. If you do believe 
that, then you will be quite disappointed and perhaps even 
disillusioned with amateur radio public service communications. As I 
have said many, many times before, when someone comes into this arena, 
they need to check their ego at the door otherwise there will be an 
awful lot of hurt feelings because they will wind up taking comments 
and challenges to issues personally, when the ones making the comments 
and challenges are not doing so personally.

73,
Pat Scolla, wb0egr
Harford County EC & RO