From: oopdavid@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (D.RODMAN)
Newsgroups: rec.radio.amateur.misc
Subject: Re: hams helping with Iniki emergency
Date: 15 Sep 92 10:58:00 GMT
Organization: University at Buffalo
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41

In article <7989@public.BTR.COM>, grady@btr.BTR.COM (Grady Ward  grady@btr.com) writes...
>What can individual hams do do help out in the communications emergency
>resulting from Hurricane Iniki?  Plenty.   And _you_ get to set the time and
>amount of aid to fit into your usual schedule.
> 
>One way of helping is simply to take outgoing "health & welfare" messages
>that can be delivered via a collect call.  Get on your favorite HF band with the
>likelihood of propagation to Hawaii from where you live.  For example, from
>the Western United States, you might listen at a beam heading of 255 degrees,
>and on, say, fifteen meters, call CQ as:  "CQ CQ CQ for Hawaii outgoing
>health & welfare traffic.  Collect calls only.   This is KD6ETH calling CQ."
> 
>Repeat call as needed, whenever and wherever you think you might be heard
>by a Hawaii ham.
> 
>After getting the name and phone number of the stateside recipient, the name of
>the third party wishing to send the message, and the message itself (which you
>may wish to restrict to the "I'm OK" type, depending on your time). Repeat as
>needed.
>After you accept whatever number that you have time to handle at that time
>during that session, you sign and make a best attempt at delivery.  That's it.
>You helped in the Iniki emergency.  Congratulations!
> 
>You can choose to take one message, or a hundred.  You don't have to listen to a 
>"net frequency".  You don't have to wait for a tedious net roundtable to get to
>your turn.  You can do it now, and you can be 100% responsible for the result.

> 
You must be a used car salesman.  Your information is, in my opinion as a 25 
year ham very misleading to the point of being totally worthless to any new
commer out there.  Listen people, there are protocols for handling health
and welfare traffic on ham frequencies for disasters such as this.  Generally,
this is coordinated through the local authorities to RACES.  Without power
on Kauai, I doubt you will CQ into many hams trying to call a well intentioned
person on the mainland to make a few phone patches.  The idea is totally
rediculous.  Most activity will likely start off with UHF/VHF packet and
repeater activity (I believe we have seen those postings already on this 
forum), then become more more generalized to HF.  Remember, those Kauai
hams KNOW THE HAMS ON NEARBY ISLANDS HAVE (AND HERE IS THE BAD WORD) *
TELEPHONES* who can make all the calls to loved ones they want.  They 
won't likely be sitting on HF looking for those 255 degree beam headings, they 
will be concentrating on local communications to the other islands.  In fact,
I understand that much telephone service is already restored to Kauai.

Now if you are interested in getting messages to Kauai, I suggest you try
the phone first, it might be working.  Second, try to find your SCM, that's
Section Communications Manager to get the update on message handling from your
part of the country to Hawaii.  You might even ***LISTEN*** to those 
frequencies and learn how message handling is done at first, to kill those
urges of the 255 degree CQ.

Good luck, Kauai!!!

Dave, KN2M
>73 de Grady KD6ETH
> 
>-- 
>Grady Ward  grady@btr.com  Moby Lexicons