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Old 09-28-2014, 05:59 PM   #5
Mr. Ham
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Join Date: Aug 2014
Posts: 95
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Well, I am pretty much stuck here at home until I find a pick up truck that I can afford.
Then it will be a job to see if I can get some good antenna's on it before the snow flies.
At the house here, I can be packed up and ready to travel in about 4 hours, with my own generator, radio, computer, food, clothes, bedding..
Our problem is - a small town about 7 miles away, that floods every time we have a weather event involving rain or snow melt.
They have an emergency shelter, it would only stand to reason - since I am the nearest REAL HAM - that I would go there to man the radios and provide emergency communications. The problem being that our county Emergency Coordinator is a Fireman and he thinks that the Firemen can do it all.
Since we have never really ever had a true disaster in Western Pennsylvania, other then Hurricane Sandy, and the Great St. Patrick's day flood of 1936, and the two floods since, no one thinks that anything bad is going to happen.
When it does happen, it not only happens here, but everywhere.

My bible says, a good Shepard knows his sheep and can call them by name and that the sheep recognizes his voice and will follow him.

In my part of the world, there has only been one SET - Situational Emergency Test in the past 20 years, and it proved that we did not have enough hams to cover even some of the bases.

With no working ARES or RACES group, and only a hand full of people FEMA TRAINED, there isn't a lot that the people can expect out of us HAMS.
I have tried to work with the different groups, but there is too many chiefs and not enough braves.

Even just trying to suggest that the county uses some of their FEMA money to put up a couple of antenna's at the community center and buy a power supply and furnish a desk with a working dual band mobile radio is like asking them to fly me to the moon.

So I sit here and I just play radio for myself.
At least when I get a truck and a enclosed trailer, I can go where I please and do as I please. I don't think I am going to do many more Field Days here as long as nobody wants to take it seriously or at least use it as a promotional tool to get more hams in the fold.
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