| An awful lot is made of the fact... That Hams are against BPL. The Hams concerns are valid, and their scholarly opposition, backed by good science, is something of a "canary in the coal mine" for many other services.
There are a lot of other things of importance that use the HF spectrum. US Air Force for one. Why? Because in critical RF communications services, you really want a lot of redundancy. If HF is rendered unusable in some places, you have problems come crunch time.
HF can be rather valuable stuff at crunch time.
All in all, this BPL thing has all the makings of Commerce going head-on at Common Sense. |
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 TransmasterDon't Blame Me I Voted For Bill and Opus
join:2001-06-20
Cheyenne, WY | Yes and now that the international Morse code testing requirement is dead we will have bunch more people using HF  
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The older I get the more I prefer the company of my dogs over that of man kind. |
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| Sure, and I kinda think that is a Good Thing. Kinda. On the other hand, come a Real Crunch Time, nothing is gonna get your message out real far like a good fist. |
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RayWPremium
join:2001-09-01
Layton, UT
kudos:1 | Cell phone! *innocent look* |
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| said by RayW:Cell phone! *innocent look* Ask those poor people down on the Gulf Coast how well their Cell Phone messages got out after Katrina got done with them.
A small generator, a low power HF radio and a CW key can get that traffic out rather smartly, and pretty far. |
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RayWPremium
join:2001-09-01
Layton, UT
kudos:1 | said by TScheisskopf:said by RayW:Cell phone! *innocent look* Ask those poor people down on the Gulf Coast how well their Cell Phone messages got out after Katrina got done with them. A small generator, a low power HF radio and a CW key can get that traffic out rather smartly, and pretty far. You are preaching to the choir.
We had a talk the other day from a doctor with the LDS Humanitarian Services. She said she was at her mom's house in Florida not too far from the tornado's path (they just lost most of the roof). She had TWO cell phones AND the land line, all three of which were busy for about four hours. Not broken, just overloaded. She said the outdated ham radio was the only reliable communication for that four hours.
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I am not lost, I find myself every time. |
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| And there's the rub a lot of our "Telecom Geniuses" here don't realize: In times of real emergency, you might need the communications NOW, and the infrastructure might have gone away for days, weeks or months, if Katrina is any barometer.
With a car battery, a length of wire, a radio that fits in the palm of your hand, some paddles and a set of cans, yer' talkin' to someone. |
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