[Qcwa] About the "Loan" operators

[qcwa@mailman.qth.net]

Sorry - no tales of heroics or CW traffic.  It's hard for a New Yorker to get 
excited over a 10 hour blackout after 9/11. 

I was on the way home from an errand when all the traffic lights went out 
(that was great - took me 10 minutes less to get home without having to wait 
for all those lights).  I checked out the local repeaters but nothing was 
going on there.   Most don't have emergency power anyway so it's hard to hear 
them in when the power is off.  As to HF and CW, well I don't have an HF 
antenna at the moment so a power failure doesn't affect my operation very 
much.

I remember in 1977, I immediately contacted our radio club and got assigned 
to our local precinct. I spent 8 miserable, hot, boring hours there with 
nothing to do until I was released.  Like 1977, there wasn't an interruption 
in landline phone service, thus no communications emergency and no clear 
reason for Hams to be involved.  Therefore I thought better of volunteering 
this time and spent the evening in my pool.  The juice came on at 0200, our 
community was one of the lucky ones.  Hummm.. I wonder how much I can sue Con 
Ed for because I had to sleep one night without air-conditioning?

The most interesting thing was that everybody fired up their barbeques to 
make dinner and the aroma of grilling was everywhere in the neighborhood.  
Both me and doggie were salivating as we groped around for our 
evening "walkie".  (Oh yes, there was another terrible technological 
difficulty there - most stoves and grills now have electric igniters and most 
of us haven't seen a book of matches in years. Good thing there are still a 
few smokers around or we all would have starved.)

Sure, the cell phones were overloaded and lots of people had to remember how 
to put a quarter in a pay-phone slot, but beyond that, from this Ham's point 
of view, the Big Blackout of 2003 was a Big Nothing.  Sorry if I sound 
cynical, I know things were a lot worse in Cleveland where they had no water, 
but I just tell it like it is and leave the "spin" for the professionals. I'm 
sure next month's QST will have great coverage of the critical role of 
Amateur Radio in the Blackout of 2003.

73

--
Mike KA2E
http://home.att.net/~ka2e