[wglb]

> Just to be clear, saying “Vital” is overselling

One of the motivations for the Chicago Marathon group to reach out to the ham club was was that in a previous year a runner died due to inadequate communication. I would call the prevention of that or even less serious health consequences Vital.

> That’s really all it takes.

I would put a strong disagree about this as well.

You are leaving out a lot of the protocol for operation. This takes a bit of training and experience to be able to handle lots of situations, like when to talk, when to listen, and what to do if you are unsure if your communication has been received or not.

[eddythompson80]

That’s the difficulty of it right? We’re just talking about what qualifies as “vital”. Is saving 1 life “vital”? I’m sure you, I, and most people would say yes. What else could you say? But it’s not likely to “move the needle” per se in a broader rescue effort. Ham radio is “vital” in emergency situations in the sense that it “could” help some people. But if it was really a needle mover, why is it left to volunteers and community best-effort to do? Why are we not demanding publicly funded rescue services to hold these roles instead? Because the ROI in terms of moving the needle of a rescue effort is just not there.

An emergency net operated by amateur ham operators can last for hundreds of hours answer 800 questions, 780 of those are “how is it lookin’ out there?”, “any updates when this neighborhood is getting power back”, “this is Victor-Tango-7-Kilo-Kilo-India happy to help out folks if you need anything just holler”. Maybe 15 of someone actually reporting some useful update for a given value of usefulness and maybe 0-1 actual emergency stuff. It gives people with radios a place to vent without tying up actual rescue group resources answering and re-answering mundane questions.