Big Shakeout 2012...

So, I'm getting emails and newsletters from the local municipality, HAM groups, news outlets and religious organizations all announcing their participation in the Big Shakeout, otherwise known and an earthquake drill.

I've participated in the past in these "drills" in one form or another and other than mobilizing people in neighborhoods to realize that they actually have neighbors I view this as nothing more than a marketing and advertising effort by various "emergency services" groups across the the state.

My experience overall has been negative, whether it is handing out bottled water to people driving up to some point-of-distribution or manning a radio station to report the number of bottles given out, I see little in the way of preparedness and education about the possibilities of disaster.
Generally, from my view, it seems that various officials collect in central locations to warmup coffee pots, computers and flat screen monitors in EOCs and situation centers to run through the mundane tasks of locating, dusting off and reading through tabletop exercise plans.
The result is the written up as a news release to the press, patting each other on the back and talk about "lessons learned" which will be forgotten before next year, shut it all down and go home that afternoon and forget all about it, thus ticking another box on a goal sheet somewhere and filing a report.

The view from the field does nothing to influence this perspective in any way. The reality is and will be, people will panic, they will frantically grasp for available resources and EOCs may never even have the lights turned on in the event of a real life situation.
This exercise will go down as a bunch of folks all congratulating each other on a job well done, releasing that press report and failing to remind people in the field the exercise is actually complete. Add in the squabbling by various local HAMs about the FCC rules regarding the use of Amateur Band Frequencies by agencies, ambiguous still thanks to the failure of the FCC to clarify, and you are back to relying on technologies like cellular voice and data that will most certainly be overwhelmed.
So, what will you be doing during the Big Shakeout?

Dust off your radios and get your grab-and-go ready, don't forget to charge the batteries in your little-rascal scooter too...

Have you had a different experience?

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Location:Big Shakeout 2012

Interesting comments to consider from an anonymous post:

"On the subject of etiquette, who is out of line, the operator that tells another operator that his signal is scratchy into the repeater and refuses to talk to him?

Or the operator who may not live in the shadow of the nearest repeater and is trying to utilize his new ham license with his brand new treasured handy talkie?"

While I wouldn't say either is "out of line" but that telling another operator their signal is scratchy would be a valid signal report and the choice is still that operators' to continue or terminate a QSO. Refusing to respond seems different, based on perspective, it implies you heard someone but because it wasn't clear or you weren't able or willing to respond, for whatever reason. I think that choice still valid.

As for living in the shadow of the nearest repeater, the repeaters in this area cast many shadows but most seem to be very quiet in spite of handy talkie accessibility. Others may not be as fortunate to have such coverage though.

Interesting comments to consider.

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Location:More to consider, comments from anonymous on etiquette

To Net or not to Net, Traffic or No Traffic...

I've heard, been a part and conducted Radio Nets since earning my license.

My experience has been, oner this time, that nets are all the same. Same script, same people, same amount of time, same nothingness.

In this area, the preamble, announcements, checkins and the net in general are almost identical. The same people conduct the same boring nets, announcing their call signs, name, location and the majority of the time this is followed by "No Traffic."

Frankly, I think people would fall over if anyone actually had "traffic" for the net. Shudder to think anyone was actually paying attention to the net other than to hear their call sign or regurgitate "No Traffic" if you have no traffic for the net, why not speed things up for the checkin process and simply acknowledge your call sign instead?

For this reason I find Nets, boring, repetitive and severely lacking in content...again, at least in this area. Most local nets are dominate by the same HAMs and their herd roaming from repeater to repeater all announcing "No Traffic" and then continuing on to the next Net, sometimes an hour or even a few minutes apart.

Consider this, while this bunch persists in announcing "No Traffic" I have yet to get a response from any if one calls CQ on that repeater, perhaps they're assembling their "Traffic" or "No Traffic and are too busy to key their mic and throw out a reply.

Many repeaters, no response. Perhaps it's because they actually have "No Traffic" for me?

Warm up your radio, it's time for the No Traffic Net.

Radio etiquette....yes we heard that.

Listening to a local repeater today I overheard a couple of operators chewing the rag about the usual, traffic, weather their jobs etc. This evolved into a discussion about outsourcing or offshoring when one of the operators responded to the other with a very poor imitation of, as he described later "china man" accent to which the other operator began parroting his remarks and accent.

Offensive?

I think so and here's why I think so, as a HAM you don't know who is listening to your repeater traffic and considering this particular repeater is connected to IRLP it's possible many others around the globe could have heard this conversation.

Based on this one could make the assumption that these operators are simply making a poor attempt at humor, but I think it's yet another example of poor operator etiquette.

Remember you really don't know who is listening and I hope the effort that people put into getting the Amateur Radio License isn't simply to get on the radio and exhibit poor etiquette and bad mouthing of others, but it seems that may not be the case here, then again perhaps I should have said something?

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10 Meters during the Day.

I don't remember anyone mentioning this, but I had a question posed if 10 meters is more of a 'daytime' band.
I did pickup a contact (the first I've heard on 10 Meters) in Atlanta I believe his call sign was KC4TVZ and although I had some difficulty understanding him, due to band conditions and the fact that I was mobile.

I did hear a signal report right before he dropped out and he told me I was 5/9 with only 100 watts, I wasn't able to complete the QSO before conditions deteriorated.

I'll be listening more, hoping 10 meters opens up for use.

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D-Star Radio Problems..

Another blog about HAM Radio makes you go 'ugh'?

I hope not I'll be offering up tips and ideas and pitfalls I've tumbled into with radio.

Today I discovered or finally discovered a problem that had been plaguing my Icom IC/ID-V82 the symptoms appeared as though I had a battery (NiCd) failing to hold a charge, but instead it wasn't making good contact on the upper connectors on the handset itself.

There are two spring connectors on the upper part of the back of the handset, the one on the left had compressed in and wasn't making good contact. Here I though I had a battery problem, but closer examination it was merely a poor connection.

I'm usually on KF6RAL, but the gateway is currently down internet access has been removed and the repeater site is on a mountain still covered with snow, or you can find me on REF001C with my DVAP.

de K7KHA