Ooops, sorry I forgot to delete the message at the bottom. Twenty lashes
with a piece of RG-8.--Tom, WW5L
Tom Anderson wrote:
Reprinted from DallasNews.Com technology section. A 5-column article
ran Wednesday 9/23/04 in the Dallas Morning News's Business section.
Photos of Brandenburg and some of the devastation from the Caymans ran
with the story. Tom Anderson, WW5L/7P8TA/V31EF
Link to the online story is below. You may have to join DallasNews.com
to see photos though.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/ptech/generalstories2/092204ptechccjrhamradio.2cc9.html
Ham radio to the rescue
Dallas exec sets up in Caymans after Ivan
September 22, 2004
By VIKAS BAJAJ / The Dallas Morning News
It didn't take David Brandenburg long to make up his mind after he was
unable to reach any of his friends on the Cayman Islands a day after
Hurricane Ivan ravaged the British territory.
David Brandenburg
David Brandenburg snapped a photo of the hurricane devastation in the
Grand Caymans. He rushed to the islands to check on friends and set up a
ham radio station there.
With his wife's encouragement, the lifelong ham radio operator headed
for the Caribbean islands equipped with gear to restore a communications
link to the mainland after the hurricane struck Sept. 12. He flew to
Tampa, Fla., on Sept. 13, switching to a friend's twin-engine propeller
plane early the next morning to make the final hop to the Grand Caymans.
"We left kind of on a wing and prayer," said Mr. Brandenburg, chairman
and chief executive of Dallas-based Intervoice Inc. "We had no idea
whether we would be able to land, and in fact we were turned down for a
few hours."
Within hours of arriving, he had set up a ham radio station at a
friend's condo and was relaying messages to the mainland, reassuring
worried relatives and giving an account of the devastation.
Before heading for the Gulf Coast last week, Ivan ravaged the Caymans,
knocking out power, telephone and water utilities on the banking and
tourism hub. The systems began coming back online late last week.
Ham radios have often served as the critical communications backup in
the aftermath of natural disasters because they don't rely on a
centralized infrastructure and can communicate over long distances. But
the island's ham radio operators couldn't serve as a backstop because
the hurricane's winds destroyed their antennas.
"That's one of the reasons I went down there," said Mr. Brandenburg, 59.
"There are probably a dozen hams that are residents there. ... Everyone
I talked to had lost their antenna."
Mr. Brandenburg, who started operating ham radios when he was 14, found
his most important function on the island was dispelling mistaken
Internet reports about Ivan's toll on life and property.
"One report on the Internet said that 40 people had died at a shelter,
and that was not true," he said. "There were rumors that hotels had been
blown off, and that wasn't true."
To be sure, Ivan did wreak much damage on the islands, and it will take
months to clean up and restore the infrastructure.
When Mr. Brandenburg left on Friday, the islands' wireless-phone
companies were just beginning to broadcast signals again. Commercial
power was still not available in many places this week.
The power outage made it hard to keep the ham radios going. Mr.
Brandenburg improvised with generators and batteries from the island's
golf carts. "The generator would keep going out because we didn't have
enough gas," he said.
Though supplies are now streaming onto the islands, Mr. Brandenburg and
his friends breakfasted and lunched on dry roasted peanuts and water.
For dinner, they grilled fresh food that his Tampa friend would fly in
on supply runs to the mainland.
"The good news is that everyone was working very hard, and there are
lots of supplies coming into the islands," he said. "And soon all the
women and children will be off the island."
Mr. Brandenburg returned to Texas on Friday, leaving behind two sets of
ham radios. Altogether, the trip and equipment cost him $8,000, a small
price for checking on friends he has known for the 25 years he has
visited the islands.
"It wasn't necessarily a lot of fun," he said, "But it was a great time."
_______________________________________________
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