EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS

This column is not about me, or my own experience. It’s about you — amateur radio operators around the world who step up when things are down. That might be to help coordinate a neighborhood fun run. It might be a major athletic or political event. It might be a genuine emergency … a weather-related disaster, a large wildfire, an earthquake or now, even a pandemic. This column is about questions which can be universal to our corner of this great hobby and service. Some of those I received from my new ARRL Section Manager, Tom Foy, WB8LCD, who is busy trying to do the “rapid indoctrination” into the many facets of amateur radio going on in the Ohio section. Tom can’t be the only one wondering … even those of us deep in the trenches have found ourselves wondering, “Can we really?” In answering him, I hope to be an encouragement, prodding you to keep going, keep the enthusiasm, keep the dedication to community. And I thank Tom for graciously allowing me to share his questions with you.

“When All Else Fails…”

This is a pretty bold statement, Tom writes. “It seems that about