[aprssig] APRS In the New Orleans Area

[N0YXV - Stan Coleman]

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At the risk of inflating this open friendly discussion I'm throwing in
my 2 cents. ;-) We may find out in the weeks and months to come that the
reason it took so long for aid to get to New Orleans is that every one
was waiting for someone in power to tell them what to do.

I see nothing wrong with grabbing a chain saw and cutting down a tree in
the way. In New Orleans it looks to me like we have way too many of
Bob's neighbors. I noticed a lot of people setting around at different
sites doing nothing but waiting. (I'm not counting the sick, elderly and
extremely hungry in my numbers.) However I was pleased by several people
the brought the elderly out of there homes to safety only to be seen
returning to the neighborhood to find more stranded people. Remember
these are people ALREADY in harms way that I'm talking about...not do
gooders from outside trying to rush in and add to an existing problem
that I'm talking about here. I'm not trying to BASH people that are in a
VERY bad situation in their shoes who know what any of us would do. I'm
only trying to provide thoughts for, "What if this happens to me."

Now having said that I can also see the flip side. If you randomly start
throwing RF around in different bands you might block some "Vital"
communications. Now the only thing I wish somebody could explain to me
is how reconstituting an already existing APRS network in an area where
everybody knows the frequency is in use could in any way possible block
"Vital" communications? It would seem to me to be the opposite. That is
if the network is down lets put it back up and then figure out how to
improve the settings to tweak it when its running. We could talk until
we are blue in the face about the RIGHT way to do it. But then again it
might take a week to get APRS up and running again. (Pun in reference to
how long it took to get food to people IS intended.)

I'm in NO way an expert at ANY of this so don't take my _thoughts_ as
the gospel truth. I do however believe that this discussion is vitally
important and should be continued. PROVIDED that the reader reads
EVERYONE'S comments and not just one side.
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