Steve Bonine wrote:
I would like to see other opinions on this issue, which came up in
passing in another group.

One of the participants there mentioned that a ham radio license has
been added as an employment condition for some of their professional
responders. Presumably the motivation is based on a desire to have a
known population of people who can use ham radio technology in a
disaster if nothing else is working.

I have two questions on this.

Is this a common situation? I hadn't heard of a formal requirement
until it was mentioned on the other forum, but a couple more people came
forward and said that it was in place in their area. Is it happening in
your area?

It isn't a requirement in our area, but it is apparently strongly
encouraged. This is one of the situations that I refer to as
"Professional Hams". It is truly a profound change in emergency
operations. I am pretty convinced that the end strategy of all this is
that these groups expect to use amateur radio via their "professional
hams, and will not use hobbyists in the future.


Do you think it's a good idea?

Not particularly.

The nature of emergency work is that it only happens when there is an
emergency, so people have a lot to talk and think about in between
emergencies.

One of the things that emergency planners do best is impose a structure
on work and situations. The problem is that structure tends to go away
as soon as the emergency happens, just like battle plans.

It's why Ice trucks were left sitting in parking lots in another state
when they were needed in the Katrina aftermath, its why emergency groups
talk about interoperability, not realizing that the more structure they
put in place, the more points for failure there will be. We seem to
think that if "the boss" can see what everyone is doing and can directly
command them, then all will be well. When in reality, the folks on the
ground need to be able to function autonomously and be trusted to make a
decision.

So instead of having trained communicators on board - note that by
trained communicators, I mean people who know how to get comms across X
number of miles at Y o'clock, not those who just know what to say -
we'll be having professionals who happen to have a license.

Getting a Ham radio license is just an entry ticket. Are these new folks
going to be able to put together a repeater system when the hurricane
comes through and knocks out every other one in the stricken area? Will
they wonder why they can't talk to others in the same state on 20 meters
or that 75 meters seems so dead during the daytime? That is what Hams
have brought to the table over the years.

I know that mine is a minority opinion, hopefully I'm very wrong!

- 73 de Mike N3LI -