[Qcwa] About the "Loan" operators

[W1EOF]

Mike,

I'm happy that you made out so well during the blackout. I'm really sorry
that you are so cynical.

Is it possible that not everyone was as fortunate as you?  What about the
people that were stuck in elevators? What about the wheelchair-bound, unable
to make it down 30 flights of stairs? What about the people who although not
life-threatened were overjoyed to get word that their loved one was OK, and
was just stuck without transportation home?

I'm sorry that there was once an occasion where you volunteered, and you
were not able to be a hero saving the lives of many schoolchildren from a
buring inferno. (Speaking facetiously) It's not about that. It's about
serving, it's about helping out in whatever way you can. Not that I'm
comparing in any way, but ask any firefighter... ask any cop, that's their
life. Long hours of doing "nothing important." They don't quit.

I guess this is just a reflection of peoples attitudes these days, it seems
to be all too common. On another email list there's a guy complaining
because a served agency had the gaul to ask the hams to answer some phones!
They didn't realize that the hams were *WAY* above that, they were highly
trained... well no, they were well practiced... well no, they were... they
were... they were people who thought an awful lot of themselves obviously.
<g>

73,

Mark W1EOF


> -----Original Message-----
> From: qcwa-admin@mailman.qth.net [mailto:qcwa-admin@mailman.qth.net]On
> Behalf Of ka2e@att.net
> Sent: Sunday, August 17, 2003 4:21 PM
> To: qcwa@mailman.qth.net
> Subject: [Qcwa] About the "Loan" operators
>
>
> 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
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