The Inevitable Death of Ham Radio

Yes, yes, I know. You've heard this before. It's been pronounced when FM was introduced, screamed from the mountaintops when no-code came to be, and continues even today with BPL. However, I have seen some disturbing trends lately, and I think that they point towards the slow and painful death of the hobby we hold dear. Please, indulge me for a moment as I explain.

Whenever there is any threat to Amateur Radio, be it potential band reallocation, Part 15 intrusion, or any other issue that threatens to upset the status quo, we hams immediately raise the one sacred, (usually) FCC-scaring, blood boiling rallying cry that we have - WE PROVIDE EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS. We never justify ourselves anymore as advancers of the radio art (we'd be hard pressed to do so these days), so the only value we can provide to justify our continued occupancy of billions of dollars of spectrum is merely emergency communications. I believe that very soon, certainly in my lifetime, we will be all but out of that game. Allow me to explain.

I have been a resident of Tampa, FL for the past few years. 2004 will certainly be remembered around here for a long time - and should have been a shining example of emergency communications saving the day time and time again. You didn't hear that this time. Wonder why? I spent time in some of the hardest hit areas here in Florida, and what I saw from an emergency communications perspective scared me silly. Before we tackle that, however, let's go back in time a little:

1991: A newly licensed ham living in Long Island, NY; I am called up to help provide communications in support of Hurricane Bob, which would up dealing a glancing blow to the eastern end of the Island. We were activated by the local emergency management office, and assigned to various government and first responding agencies to allow for intercommunication if needed. Fortunately, we were not tasked in my immediate area.

1996: TWA Flight 800 crashes off the coast of Long Island. Hams assist the Red Cross in providing communications for mass care operations (primarily). This, I will later realize, is the first operation I have been involved with in which hams were merely augmenting a cellular system that was overloaded for an agency that has radio communication equipment of its own but rarely uses due to training and equipment issues.

2001: 9/11. I am forced by my employer to sit this one out in Florida (where I have arrived earlier in the year), but manage to scrape together a web-based database to manage the load of volunteers. I quickly realize that this, again, is a Red Cross/Salvation Army support operation. I never heard of any assistance to FDNY, NYPD, Port Authority Police, the EMO, or anything else.

2004: Four hurricanes in almost as many weeks. Hardly anywhere in Florida has not been affected by these storms. People are without food, shelter, electricity, water, telephones, cell phones (in many cases). Essentially, much of Florida has dialed the clock back 100 years or so. Tensions are high. The EMOs consider how to prevent civil disturbances and looting of incoming food and supplies. Fire Departments are going door to door looking for survivors. Driving through the main street of a town at night is hazardous at more than 5mph due to the amount of overhead and downed debris and electrical wiring (which probably is dead, but who knows?).

So, you might ask, how did Amateur Radio respond?

I'm not sure we did.

I responded to 3 seriously hit areas: Wauchula (in Central Florida), Punta Gorda (in South Florida) and Pensacola (in the Florida Panhandle).

In Wauchula, we delivered a portable repeater system so that the responding agencies could communicate. That sounds like a fine use of ham radio - except it was a Forestry repeater, on their frequencies. Sure, we hams brought it and deployed it, but anyone familiar with the setup could have. The Sheriff's Department lost a huge tower (and thus their repeater) in the storm, leaving them with no communications save simplex, which didn't even come close to covering their operating area. Therefore, deputies in the furthest reaching areas had no communications. We were able to move their repeater to another location that had a working antenna and saved the day. But once again, we did not operate OUR radios, save for local simplex communications to get this all accomplished.

As the EMO had no tasking for us (by now the cellular providers had their mobile cell sites around), we left.

Punta Gorda. Ground Zero for Hurricane Charley. I arrive there a week after Charley hits to help relieve the operators from the local area. I get there to find no tasking other than Red Cross communications, and a Section Manager so starved for something to do - ANYTHING to do - that he cooks up a plan to have hams drive around the community soliciting health and welfare traffic. Remember, folks, this is a full WEEK after the Hurricane. If you haven't gotten a message out to your loved ones in a week, you probably don't want to. Again, there's little to do - the Red Cross is using Nextels - which are working.

Pensacola. In the wake of Hurricane Ivan, the call goes out - hams are needed - BADLY. I kiss the YL goodbye, load my Jeep, and start out on the 8 hour drive. Upon arrival, I am sent to the local Red Cross (here we go again) headquarters to relieve operators. There, I meet two hams who inform me that they have passed 3 messages in the past 24 hours. Three. One ham has extensive damage to his home and, quite frankly, this is a better place for him to sleep at the moment. The other ham wonders what we are doing there. He departs the next morning.

In the morning, I am informed that Red Cross operations are moving from the Chapter Headquarters to a larger facility in the donated basement of a commercial company. I am asked to establish communications from there to the EOC. Getting there, I am staggered to find that I am expected to provide communications to a building that has working telephones, internet access, email, a slew of Nextels that are being handed out, and, to add insult to injury, 2 Red Cross comm vans with every type of radio known to man (including ham), satellite links into the National Red Cross Network, and WiFi.

I tell the hams running the show at the EOC what the story is - I'm providing communications for a building that has more communications than I think I have ever seen in one location before. They respond by sending a total of 4 more hams to assist. I speak to the local EC and tell him that if he doesn't want a boatload of really perturbed hams, he'd better find some taskings for us to justify putting out the ARES equivalent of an All Points Bulleting screaming for ham help. He promises that we will have something to do in the morning.

I spend a part of the night helping the Red Cross folks set up WiFi so that they don't have to run cabling to each workstation for network access. I begin to wonder if I could have left my license at home.

The next morning, we do indeed have a tasking. The Red Cross is making a push into the hardest hit local area on the beach near the Gulf of Mexico - as close to the landfall point as we're gonna get. (It literally is described almost like an offensive against rebels in Iraq). Given the amount of sand that was blown over roadways, I am chosen along with another of my overnight compatriots for the task since we both have 4-wheel drive. We depart, with instructions to meet and team up with two other hams at the parking lot of a local supermarket just outside the devastated area. There, we are to await the Red Cross team that will push Mass Care into this area.

Upon our arrival, we meet the two hams immediately, and they are NOT happy. They've been waiting there for this Red Cross team for HOURS, and each time they ask where the Red Cross is, they are told "any time now". Seeing us, they quickly decide that we are their relief. They've had it, and head home. Net Control doesn't sound too surprised to hear that they have abandoned ship.

My new partner and I wait for three hours. Yes, that's right, THREE HOURS. No sign of the Red Cross. During our wait, we take some time to take a look at the shopping center in this hard-hit, hurricane ravaged area. The supermarket is open. OPEN? We look inside. They have milk. MILK? I can't buy milk in TAMPA, and we never came close to being hit by Ivan! Further inspection here reveals that they have ice, bread, bottled water, and everything that people in a hurricane-ravaged area should be waiting in long lines and mugging their fellow citizens for. All the while, my cell phone has a great signal, and I am able to make and get calls at will. Now, really starting to question our mission here, we begin asking Net Control the tough questions: WHERE IS THIS TEAM, AND WHAT IS OUR MISSION? A great deal of scurrying is heard over in the EOC, and eventually we are told that they don't know where the Red Cross team is, but we should await them.

Sorry. We've been here for three and a half hours, and the team before us was waiting almost as long. I snap. I drive back, collect my belonging, and without so much as a word, I begin the drive home, arriving at 4am, the stomach acid churning in my stomach having proved quite adequate to keep me awake for the drive. The other ham (and a few others) leave the area as well, ranging from disillusioned to plain old mad.

Sitting back afterwards, I began to realize a few trends that had been slowly emerging:

1. Ham Radio (well, ARES anyway) has largely become the free communications auxiliary to the Red Cross.

Worse, they already have enough communications capability to more than cover themselves. Their problem? A lack of trained communicators. Suddenly, I grasp why we always seem to be assigned to the Red Cross. I try to remember the last time I was assigned to anyone other than the Red Cross during an emergency. I have to go back almost ten years.

2. The Red Cross doesn't need us.

Even while assigned to the Red Cross, the only task consistently put to hams is to relay shelter census counts. I almost couldn't believe my ears as I heard hams relaying shelter census counts to an EOC when both had fully working landline phones. Why are we used in this scenario? Because they don't have to use Red Cross personnel to do it. For their critical comms, they use Nextel. I can't remember the last time I saw the Red Cross even use their OWN radios, which they have in abundance.

3. Cell phones, mutual aid repeaters, Blackberries are replacing Ham Radio as the inter-agency communications glue.

None of the Emergency Management Offices I worked with had any need for communications outside of these. Cell phone providers rush in mobile cell sites (called "COWs" - Cellular On Wheels - a cell site on a trailer) when an emergency hits - and registered Emergency Management personnel get higher priority on the cell network - so overloaded cell sites are becoming a thing of the past for our served agencies. Blackberries run on the cellular networks and are low bandwidth devices. Even in areas with no electricity, the Blackberry owners were tapping away like mad.

Now, you may say that this isn't the case in your area. You might even be right. However, I think we have seen the end of the era in which Amateur Radio saves the day as a matter of course in this country. In fact, the only example I've seen lately of Ham Radio coming through where all else fails is in the Hurricane Nets to the islands like Cuba, Grenada, and Haiti. In other words, those outside the US.

I see this as in inevitable slide down a slope towards more and more communications capability in the hands of the masses. Look at the revolution in smart cellphones - I carry a Treo 600 - a device from which I can surf the web, get and send email, and make and get phone calls - all in one little device. It wasn't all that long ago (fifteen years, perhaps?) that a cell phone was considered small if it fit in a briefcase. Where will we be in fifteen more years? Will we be able to still claim that we provide a critical, unique, robust communications capability? I think that once so many forms of communications saturate the general public that they can't all possibly go down during a disaster that we will have lost that argument. Remember when CW was the mode that got you through when all else failed? Now, make that argument to anyone but a CW buff and you'll be laughed at. I remember being able to show my HT to a teenager and see the look of amazement when I made a contact over a repeater to the next County. Now, that same teenager will ask if that big cell phone I'm carrying can play cool ringtones. I rapidly see the day approaching in which we will be relegated to the museums like the dinosaurs that we will have become - a quaint memory of what once was. A nostalgic trip down communications lane. We will, as a hobby, become the macrocosm of CW - outdated, outmoded, and universally laughed at as we try to claim that we are needed somehow.

And then the spectrum vultures will come.

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