Romney "Disses" Amateur Radio In Televised Town Meeting (and why he won't get my vote)

Eastern MA American Radio Relay League ^ | Wednesday 16 November 2005 @ 15:48:10 | Eastern Massachusetts ARRL

[freebird5850]

And your signal here is 5-9.....thanks for posting...73
N7LRG.

[Dr.Zoidberg]

If myth is not aware of the absolutely indispensable contributions of amateur radio in emergency situations, what other fundamental knowledge is the nitwit lacking?

Or should I say the mitt Wit?

If he is the best the (R) brand can scrounge up, 4 more years of "the boy who would be king" is assured.

[JoeFromSidney]

if everything goes down the tubes to the point only ham operators are ‘up and running’ nobody but other ham operators will hear them

It doesn't work that way. Ham operators will be working with public officials, hospitals, etc., to link them together.

Just as an example, there's an annual half-marathon race run near here. Some years ago, one of the runners collapsed and there was no way to get word back to the race organizers. A Ham was asked to organize fellow hams to support the race. We now put operators at every water point, and communicate with race headquarters. The other people at the water points, the driver of the "sag wagon," and those at race headquarters, don't listen to the ham radios. Each is assisted by a ham operator who handles their message traffic.

The point is that ham operators handle message traffic for people who are not themselves hams, but who need to communicate. Supporting this race is simply practice for us hams, to be ready for a real emergency. We can provide communications even when everything else is down, because we have (and pay for) our own backup power, our own radios, etc.

[haroldeveryman]

International Regulators have been chipping away at ham radio share of the broadcast spectrum ever since commercial radio got going. The main reason it isn’t completely gone is that the old Soviet Union fought to preserve the ham spectrum every time the subject was brought up, because they relied on their amateurs for their own communications.

[George from New England]

My ham gear is in a copper room. It’s after the EMP that I remove it and power it up, and yes its all battery operated.

KJ4AQM