Ham Strike Team

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GlobalNorth

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"Medical Reserve Corps"? An acceptable moniker.

"Ham Strike Team"? It conjures up whackers with badges, emergency lights and sirens, HTs worn everywhere and always on, more antennas on their POV than the local hospital roof, and always ready to respond - to what, no one knows and with no defined and commonly understood tasking. What service would they provide in a critical incident? Improvised installation of a 70cm Yagi in a tornado?
 

n5ims

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"Medical Reserve Corps"? An acceptable moniker.

"Ham Strike Team"? It conjures up whackers with badges, emergency lights and sirens, HTs worn everywhere and always on, more antennas on their POV than the local hospital roof, and always ready to respond - to what, no one knows and with no defined and commonly understood tasking. What service would they provide in a critical incident? Improvised installation of a 70cm Yagi in a tornado?

Well, one thing that they have provided was directing the people that went to the civic center for the mass vaccine event so the DFR people could handle just the inside part (registration and directing to the medical teams doing the vaccines) so only few city crews were required for the event while the hams and other volunteers handled the line of cars, parking, and directing the folks into the building (at the required minimum distance between people) and kept the folks outside of their cars to a small number to help prevent transmission of the virus.

Please note that in this event, no radios were allowed or used by the outside folks who used colored flags to communicate. This was at the direction of the event organizers so no illegal radio operation was done. No HTs. No emergency lights or sirens. No antennas. Well, the DFR folks did have their HTs and their ambulances, engines, and trucks did have their radios, emergency lights and sirens, and antennas but they were all parked in a secure area with the equipment shut down. Now there were badges, but those were provided by the group running the event and this was to let the officers know that they were vetted and supposed to be in the restricted areas and directing folks along the way.

I'm not really sure that volunteers with colored flags would count as a "whacker". Yes, "Ham Strike Team" probably wasn't the best term, but it was what the organization used so what can be done. Personally, I might have suggested "Volunteer Communicators" or the like. I guess that's what happens when it's not the hams that work on the license application but folks that don't understand radio operations (after all, it's not using the radio that's the point, it's providing medical services and the radio is just a tool like any other) and all they know is generally it's a group of hams helping them with communications. At least they did get some help (probably from the city's radio department) on preparing the technical side of the application.
 

n5ims

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Colored flags.... like semaphore? Sounds like an upgrade from Baofeng.

Semaphore would be an overstatement. More like a cloth square on a wooden dowel. Wave the red flag for this, wave the green flag for that, point the yellow flag there for something else, etc.
 

MUTNAV

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I kind of appreciate the simpler communications systems.
I've always thought about how WWII was fought and won with less communications, (during some disasters it would have been good encrypted comm at least, like the USS Indianapolis situation.
on the other hand, I heard in Vietnam the brass wanted to control exactly what was struck and when by aircraft, this was possible with increased communications, With President Johnson essentially saying Those boys can’t hit an outhouse without my permission.

How much is actually needed vs. wanted is a pretty reasonable discussion to have. There is a lot to be said for just being able to signal a few pieces of information and letting people otherwise do a job as they see fit.
 

Echo4Thirty

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I guess I missing how this is a ham radio strike team if they are not on ham radio frequencies/repeaters. Wouldn't this just make it an "Anyone who we give radios to strike team" otherwise known as a regular strike team??
 

Cavscout

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Regular Strike Team v Irregular Strike Team? What about a "Scab Team" if we don't want to strike?
 

Ensnared

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I can understand the "Ham Strike Force" better than the bizarre talk group on the Fort Worth Regional P25 system, talk group 5293, "Ministers Against Crime Talk", fully encrypted. Several years ago, the Tarrant County Jail had a "God Pod" in jail. DFW is a strange animal.
 

dlwtrunked

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I guess I missing how this is a ham radio strike team if they are not on ham radio frequencies/repeaters. Wouldn't this just make it an "Anyone who we give radios to strike team" otherwise known as a regular strike team??

It has nothing to do with ham radio. HAM is an abbreviation for something else (hint: Hospital Medical).
 
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