Joe,
I agree. I manage emergency communications for a county in Colorado that is rural but borders the Denver area. I also sit on several boards for state emergency communications. We have numerous communications systems and methods available to us. We regularly hold table top and the occasional field exercise. In our worst disaster we only ever get to the second layer of backups, even in the most rural and poorly serviced parts of the state. In the most recent disaster, the Marshall Fire in a Denver/Boulder suburb, we never even got to the backup system.
I cannot imagine an amateur geo transponder ever being used for our needs. The deepest I could ever see us getting into backups would be a Starlink phone, about 5 layers down. But we had an Iridium phone for about 15 years and never turned it on.
ARES participates in planning and the exercises. We have used them in a couple of situations where they were not needed at all, to try to improve skills and integration. They regularly help in events like the county fair.
What we do need, and is very hard to develop, are radio operators who can function as public safety radio operators in places like a mobile command post or EOC. We are people short, not systems or equipment short. Our responder and dispatch jargon, and methods of communication, are very different from what ARES uses. In large emergencies we need trained and experienced people, not more equipment.
Jim
WD0E
On 8/8/2022 2:44 PM, Joseph B. Fitzgerald wrote:
I have to question just how much of a resource an amateur radio geostationary satellite would be for emergencies. Unfortunately I cannot cite any emergency communication successes on QO-100 beyond an exercise held this past February. We are competing against other space based systems that offer familiar internet connectivity and encryption - with much lower latency. Wouldn't an emergency manager want that instead? We need a good story to tell potential funding agencies. I have not heard any arguments likely to convince a grant giving organization to green light the 8 figure sum required to fund an amateur GEO project.
de KM1P Joe
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