Ham Radio Operators Are Heroes In Oregon

An anonymous reader writes "We all know the impact that Ham radio can have in emergencies, but that often slips by the public and the authorities. Not so in Oregon, where a day after getting inundated with torrential rains and winds and suffering from the usual calamities those cause, Oregon's Governor called the local Ham radio operators heroes. When discussing how the storm affected communications, the governor stated: "I'm going to tell you who the heroes were from the very beginning of this...the ham radio operators." Kudos to the Oregon Ham operators for helping out in a bad situation, and getting the recognition they deserve."

Comments

Not Just In Oregon

[gbulmash]

A friend of mine (Randy Cassingham of This Is True ) is a HAM radio operator and he's helped provide communications for emergency responders during disasters near where he lives in Colorado. When the chips are down, it seems that radio hobbyists are ready, willing, and able to help out. It's nice to see that they're getting some positive press.

Hopefully much of this thread will be kudos for Ham radio operators around the world. A lot of them use their powers for good more often than you might think.

- Greg

Ham's day is over, probably

[jimmyhat3939]

I got my first Ham license back in the 1980s. Back then you had to be able to do 20wpm morse code to get to the highest license.

Nowadays they've watered it down so that it's extremely easy to get the licenses. In addition, with the Internet you can basically walk to your computer and email the person you just talked to halfway around the world.

Anyway, in my experience the people left on the airwaves are all at least 60 years old.

Re:Ham's day is over, probably

[Mike Buddha]

Purist or Elitist? I've got a General license and I find that particularly on the internet, old hams are dickheads. They act as if we new hams are invading their private paradise, and instead of assisting and community building, they bitch and moan and howl about how ham radio is turning into CB, and how the sky is falling. Those old farts still on the air are just as crotchety as you'd expect, whining about how all the new hams are walking on their amateur band lawns.

Re:Ham's day is over, probably

[thephydes]

Morse is king if you want effective communication over long distances and have only low power available to you. If you have a computer then psk31 is probably (possibly) next best. Good software can pick up psk signals that are so quiet that they are below the noise floor. Ham radio experimenters are responsible for the early development of many communication technologies that we now take for granted. Don't write us off yet, there's still life in the hobby believe me.

Packet Radio

[camperdave]

If one could account for signal distortion/degradation, ham radio sets could conceivably be used for broadcasting files. And I mean as a binary ogg/mp3/aac/flac/whatever, not as audio that can be played by any radio.

It's called Packet Radio, and has been around about as long as the internet itself. In fact, one of the first demonstrations of TCP/IP's versatility was the connecting of a satellite network, a packet radio network, and the ARPANet. This happened back in 1977.