Brad posted:

"Wow, that's a really long way. How cents per minute would that cost?
huh
Mister?"

Brad, relize that if he is forwarding voice communications through his
computer to Japan, he is likely using the Internet which is cost free.

Then too, this neat ability would be worthless in an emergency
preparedness exercise where the assumption is made that all power and
telephone lines are down, and the service that Hams perform is largely
communicating across their own towns or to to closely adjacient
communities.

Under these circumstances, the more simplistic your rig is, the better.
The lower its power consumption, the longer your batteries will last
and if you are operating from generator power, the lower your
consumption of almost unobtainable fuel will be. This is precisely why
CD provided many hams with the low powered Gonset Communicators (Gooney
Boxes) in bright yellow painted cases.

CD had a pretty good handle on what is needed of hams during an
emergency situation, but stupidly CD was eliminated at the end of the
cold war and was replaced by FEMA. Sadly, FEMA has demonstrated its
failure to meet the needs of an emergency situation, and so hopefully
will be restructed into a modernized version of the original CD
organization. Then too, the entire Homeland Security organization has
proven itself to be nothing but a cruel joke!

A bit off topic I know, but realize that at the end of the cold war as
CD was dismantled, all of their Gooney Boxes, Geiger Counters and other
vital items were collected and sold off at government auctions. Years
later we now face the terrorism threat of nuclear devices and "dirty
bombs", with local communities having neither the instrumentation
available to either detect the radiation hazard or to communicate if
and when a disaster takes place as it eventually will. Dhuh!

Today's yuppies sit in front of their off-the-shelf commercially
produced rigs chatting with each other about meaningless subjects
while, for the most part, lacking the technical ability to either
construct their own rigs or even knowing how to repair them when the
have a problem. Essentially, many are simply displaced CB operators who
happened to cram through an exam as the result of memorizing some Q&A
book. It is a serious mistake to confuse such people with real hams who
have the ability to improvise a simple transmitter when needed. That's
why, when an actual emergency does occur, the retirement of us "old
farts" is interrupted to come to the assistance of the community. We
still have the needed vacuum tube receivers (plus spare parts) and
transmitters that will measure up to the needs of the occasion. Many of
us old hams who remember the cold war also have the radiation detection
gear needed to monitor a potential radiation hazard to our local
community (thanks to the auction of CD assets).

Curmudgeonly yours, Harry C.

p.s., I just watched a documentary about how Cuba prepares for a
hurrican emergency. Not suprisingly they still employ something
equivalent to our now dismantled CD organization, which obviously works
very well for them. Cuba calls to mind that old saying: "If it ain't
broke, don't fix it". Sadly, here in the US we forget that other good
saying: "Better is the enemy of good."