Subj : Re: No license operators
To   : Blue White
From : fusion
Date : Fri Mar 22 2024 02:54 pm

On 22 Mar 2024, Blue White said the following...
 
 BW> The niche may be gone until there is an emergency of some sort.  A few
 BW> years back... well, 30 now, doesn't seem that long ago... we had an
 BW> unusually heavy snowstorm for this area.  The authorities had to turn to
 BW> the local HAM community for assistance as other forms of communication
 BW> were overwhelmed or not working.

we had a tornado last year which for my area is mostly a once every many many years type of affair. one of the repeaters that is dead 99% of the time came alive .. was interesting to hear.

for a while almost all the information on the regular news was just information from them.. quite a bit different watching a radar on a screen vs having 40-some people checking in detailing exactly where the tornado is and which areas have trees down and building damage. plus they're a bit better than the people who call the radio stations like "OMG A TREE FELL AND I WAS SO SCARED" or whatever..

one of the guys was like "well, the tornado is pointed directly at my house, guess i have to leave" - i think he owned a trailer (no basement) - and it missed it by a little bit, but if it hadn't.. he wouldn't have known in any
reasonable amount of time without the radio.

i'm not one of those diluded "ham radio will save the world!" type of guys, but it's definitely more important than just a hobby .. sometimes :)

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