Emergency communication is very important and every user of the
radioamateur bands should take these in consideration wehen choosing a
frequency.
Unforntunately most of these emergency operations never take place on or
around the frequencies which are adviced to be used in the IARU bandplans.
Emergency centres of activity in Region 2 are:
80m:3750kHz and 3985kHz.
40m: 7060kHz, 7240kHz and 7290kHz.
Last year the Haiti earthquake emergency communication used 7045 and 3720.
Now the "Tomas" comms used 3815 and 7162.
Why do they always choose frequencies were typically nobody expects
emergency communications?
I dont understand.
73 Henk PA5KT
Op 11-11-2010 19:16, Andreas Kretzschmar schreef:
>
> Dear fellow contesters,
>
> in the wake of Hurricane "TOMAS" several Caribbean Islands from Martinique
> to Tobago were seriously affected by heavy impact of storm and rain.
>
> Only days after the incident itself the full bandwidth of distruction began
> to unfold, as more news started to trickle in from the affected areas.
> Destroyed telecommunication systems and disrupted roadways made it
> impossible to get the word out and what we heard within the first few days,
> often came on HF radio.
> Especially St. Jucia J6 suffered the worst, and i was able to follow some
> of the information, when stations from J6, some actually in the affected
> areas as part of a disaster relief teams, were able to communicate on 3815
> and give summaries of the situation as well as communicate with their
> respective Emergency Operations Centres.
>
> During the weekend Oct 30./31. 2010 this disaster communication was seriously
> impacted on both 3815 and 7162 kHz by the activities of the CQWW SSB contest.
> I personally observed during my "downtime" a DXpedition station in the
> northern caribbean working split with EU on 3815 and it was difficult to
> convince the OP to QSY. This station was of cause not the only one to
> cause serious disruptions to the Emergency Net. Several stations from EU
> were either working "reverse-split" by mistake or transmitted out of band
> intentionally. Some of them were unable to receive any call from here, but
> due to their excessive power they caused tremendous QRM.
>
> The incident has already alerted officials of the IARU Region 2 and letters
> will be sent out to several contest comittees to put pressure on them. This
> was brought to my attention by the IARU R2 treasurer, Noel Donawa 9Y4NED,
> shortly after the incident.
>
> I can't give them wrong because what i observed there was, if not rude and
> careless, at least quite inconsiderate.
>
> There is no excuse for overriding such communication in the "heat" of the
> contest.
> We all have to remember that Amateur Radio can save lives and property,
> even if it is not as important anymore in developed countries.
> We will hopefully never again experience a hurricane making landfall during
> the CQWW weekend, but there may be other disaster situations anywhere in the
> world, which make it necessary that certain frequencies have to be kept clear
> for emergency communication.
> I believe every serious contester has to show goodwill and considerate
> behaviour, as we claim to be the most experienced and best equipped group of
> the amateur radio fraternity and some even go as far as considering
> contesting as the best training for emergency communication.
>
> We as active contesters can very well do without more stringent regulations
> coming from local organizations, authorities or the IARU. Therefore i took it
> up on myself as a known active contester
> to appeal to ALL CONTESTERS and contesting organizations to self-regulate
> their activities, respectively train their members accordingly.
>
> Dear Contester,
> before you enter the next contest, please observe the following:
>
> - Check your news (TV, WWW, Newspapers) for any disasters which may
> require emergency communication on ham radio frequencies
>
> - Check publications in the internet for emergency frequencies in
> the affected region
>
> - Do not transmit on those frequencies, unless you are SURE that you
> don't disturb any emergency traffic
>
> - If you operate "split", make sure both your RX and TX frequencies
> do not interfere with emergency traffic
>
> I sincerely hope that we all can agree to the procedure above and
> i strongly believe that we will enjoy our competitions even more once we are
> appreciated by the rest of the amateur radio fraternity.
>
> 73
>
> Andreas "Andy" Kretzschmar, 9Y4W
--
Henk Remijn PA5KT
email: pa5kt@remijn.net
www: www.pa5kt.com
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