Ham operators, authorities join forces for 'emergency'

Ham operators, authorities join forces for 'emergency'

"Ham operators, authorities join forces for 'emergency'
By DEREK ABMA
Staff Writer

Ham radio hobbyists and public institutions from across the region took part in an exercise over the weekend on keeping up communications in the event of a hurricane.

Pete Peterson, a member of the Leeds and Grenville Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES), was manning some communications equipment at the Brockville Psychiatric Hospital.

'It's to test the communications between here and other places,' Peterson said of the exercise.
He said he and other participants went on the basis that electricity had been lost, which knocked out power to computers and cellphone networks.

Land-line telephone would be hard to use as well, Peterson said, given infrastructure damage and the large demand that would be placed on the system in a time of crisis.

The psychiatric hospital is one of a handful of facilities in the region with the equipment to pick up direct radio communications. In this exercise, the personnel here monitored messages certain agencies or people were trying to get to others."


73 fer nw,
Bob N5IET

10X# 37210, FP#-1141, SMIRK#-5177
http://www.n5iet.com/
Code may be taking a back seat for now,
but the pioneering spirit that put the code
there in the first place is out front of it all.