Amateur Radio
Amateur Radio isn't just an ordinary hobby, it is one that has been crossing boundries and boarders around the world and into space. Young or old, rich or poor, Nuclear Physicist or third grader, man or woman, the inside of our homes, vehicles, offices, have stopped being our prisons with the invention of communications. Today we have a very large selection of communications; using telephones to satellite Television. Wireless is the way of the future. But you would be shocked to learn about communications past.
Amateur Radio, also called "HAM" radio is in no way a toy, or an elite club. It is not about a single aspect of radio but a wide collection of experiences combined to enhance and enrich our lives. It is a hobby, but many have put themselves and their expertise and equipment on the line when an emergency happens. And some have even gone as far to give up their most valuable asset, their lives.
Ham radio operators around the world have done more to provide communications when there were none. And in 99.9% of the time, these dedicated people don't even get a thanks or job well done, but they take to heart that they have done what they could to provide such an important service.
Talking to those who are in charge.
When I get a chance to talk to those who are in charge of public service departments, the FIRST thing I ask them is WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU?
I then explain that our services are first free, we can not charge for the services we do. And most important, we are not here to take over their communications but to free up vital resources by being able to redirect the non-emergency, low priority, logistics, and other agencies messages and reduce the amount of traffic flow away from dispatchers, police officers, medical officers so that they can take care of the high priority, emergency type messages. I also let them know that we can work with agencies such as The American Red Cross, Salvation Army, Southern Baptist Conference Kitchens on wheels to name a few. We can take information from Emergency Evacuation Centers and provide a reliable direct link to the Emergency Manager to pass further logistics for evaluation or for action.
We take the messages like the Red Cross needs 240 sandwiches for shelter 23 and that shelter 12 has 120 people needing blankets. We can take messages from family members who have become seperated and try to assist in getting families back together by alerting shelters or staging areas that there are others looking for someone. In cases where "Hams" are tagging along with services like Animal Services, we can take information and relay it directly to the people who are actually doing the relocating and we can also take that information and quickly pass it to the appropriate shelter for their attention.
Now using the above example, we have just freed up several messages from the dispatcher, police, fire fighters, medical staff, and allowed higher more important traffic to be passed. Now then when a condition dictates, we can also notify the appropriate people we are stationed with (shadowing) of a crisis that needs their immediate attention. Particularly in the instances of health and welfare messages. As communications providers, we try to stay away from the media and allow the Public Information Officers to do their jobs of getting correct, accurate information to News Crews. This again cuts down speculation of what is happening or accidently letting information leak, or even just giving out the wrong information.
It's just not for around town either.
Another thing I present are examples that I personally have been in. How about sending a message from an incident, to lets say, the State Emergency Office. And the phones both cellular and landline are non-exsistant, the State Emergency Office and EOC are about 350 miles apart. How can the EMO send a request for resources to the SEO/EOC without tying up valuble resources? Easy! One thing is that amateur radio is not limited to "channels" but rather to an extreme amount of radio spectrum to use. If one set of frequencies doesn't work, we can use a different set of frequencies to make it work. Either way, we can do what we need to do to make things work. We also use a standard for messages to be passed that use a tried and true format which can be understood by any other "ham" who has ever sent a message throught the NTS or National Traffic System. A beautiful example is the Indian Ocean Tsunami and the North China Earthquakes. Hurricane Katrina, and 9/11. Amateur Radio was there, willing, capable, trained and providing services that would have costed hundred of thousands of manhours, dollars, resourcses and managed to beat the language barrier to make sure the informatin was received, transmitted, delivered, as errorfree as possible and as quickly as possible. One question that is often asked in these cases, was, "DID IT WORK?" The answer is quickly answered with, "YES and PROFESSIONALLY" and generally by someone else who was in authority to determine that the services were actually beneficial for the incidents, like the Emergency Manager.