When someone is out of touch with reality and is operating at a child's social level they usually resort to calling anyone that does not agree with them names like "whackers". Reality is, commercial and public service radio systems totally fail as shown in many recent hurricanes, the cell phone infrastructure gets completely overloaded, is rendered useless and lives are at stake due to these communications failures.
Since when is MTS200 (aka HT200) a radio system designer? Even the best radio systems can break and
a good system operator will have more than one contingency plan, including amateur radio when "all else fails".
Amateur radio is requested and welcomed by hospitals and public service agencies in disasters and there are news stories of hams responding and providing needed communications in just about every major disaster the US has had in recent times. I witness lots of amateur radio emergency drills at hospitals and there is no trace of the "Whacker" that HT200 describes.
Was HT200 once molested by an amateur radio operator and that's why you continue to degrade hams that give their time to the community? Please explain.
prcguy
Funny, the only person I see making personal attacks is you, so maybe I should referring to you as PRICguy.
PRICguy doesn't seem to get that amateur radio is, and should be, one of many resources available for hospitals and public safety. It should NEVER be a primary disaster plan in any public safety agency. A "go-to" should be a backup redundant system on a more appropriate medium.
PRICguy should spend a little more time actually reading my posts instead of being a PRIC and he'd realize I don't admonish ham radio, PRICguy apparently missed that part about my being an active ham in my community for close to 3 decades, and active in community service.
But unlike what I have seen from the local ARES clowns, I know my place. I don't have flashing lights on my car, I don't push my way in, I don't oversell amateur radio as some kind of "emergency radio" solution like a Motorola salesman, and I don't believe in using ham radio in place of other more appropriate radio service. I don't believe in changing the rules in such a way to allow for something that has been forbidden for a very valid reason, and certainly not for the outlandish reasons as put forth in the matter before the commission.
PRICguy, I have designed radio systems for public safety. In my previous employment, I worked as a communications director for a large Metro Atlanta ambulance company. I also know the needs of public safety and hospitals quite well. One thing we don't need are untrained, non-certified persons in the way of our scenes handling "third party traffic." Others have asked, just what specific traffic that needs to be passed requires encryption over ham radio and of course the answer are a pile of vague him-haw's that are easily debunked faster than any clip from Myth Busters. In the systems I maintained, we had redundancy using local municipal TRS alternate tallgroups, our primary operations were on LTR UHF trunking, if those failed, protocol was to switch to a local community repeater, if that was unavailable we would default to med 1-8. If those were down, that's why every rig had an 800 mobile programmed on the local TRS, and then I-TAC/8-TACs if those were offline. No one was asked to use ham radio (despite several people in the company including it's owner) having ham licenses. Why? Because it isn't the place for it. At no time would I ever envision some ham "communicator" riding in one of our trucks to pass third party traffic over ham radio because 1)-that's so not practical, 2)-not needed given the levels of redundancy, 3)- having non-employees on a truck is a liability. And we never passed anything sensitive over our primary or secondary radio systems. PCR's were transmitted over data cards. If those were down, they were saved to disk and handed off at shift change. So tell me where HAM RADIO would fit into that picture?
It is clear that those people like PRICguy and others who are convinced that amateur radio NEEDS to allow for encryption or ELSE we will be doomed and the FCC will sell off our spectrum to AT&T and Verizon because we aren't our playing Randy Rescue with it passing patient stats over the radio with names and medical record numbers are just plain delusional.
They want it so they can play. I wouldn't be so against that IF that were the main reason, but the reasons they spout are absurd and most logical thinking adults know and comprehend the slippery slope that allowing blanket use of encryption, especially for voice- can do to this service.
I am glad that in PRICguy's little part of the world, ham radio is welcomed with open arms by these desperate hospitals and public safety entities because they must to too broke or under the spell of some delusional ham who has them sold that ham radio is the "prepper" radio service. Guess someone's spent too much time watching episodes of "Extreme Preppers" on NatGeo.
In many circles, and sadly in my county, mentioning HAM RADIO to public safety agencies is met with eyerolls and sighs. You can thank those fools who don't know their place for that.
Ham radio has it's place, but not to the extent of modifying the radio service so much to fit the needs of the agencies served by the very radio amateur volunteers using it. If it cannot be done within the already liberal and flexible rules we have, than it needs to be done elsewhere. The assertion that ham radio is "mission critical" or "operations critical" is laughable. Nothing more than those weirdos with a light fetish who want to use it as a vehicle to hold themselves out to be something they are not so they can be where they have no business being.
