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Comment by rmason | Hacker News Reader

Hams at their own expense create and maintain a statewide emergency communication system and some government bureaucrat on a whim wants it all disbanded.

So the next time a city or state needs ham volunteers to maintain communications during an emergency they won't be able to do it. Even for California that's pretty fouled up.

My local club had a partnership with the local Red Cross, had our own club station and held meetings there for over sixty years. Then a new manager decides he can use the room we were using in the basement and kicked the club out. Sadly there was no appeal. I hope the California hams have better luck.

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The decentralized emergency backbone argument is the best thing ham radio people have going for them. It’s so much more important than people realize. And it’s entirely volunteer run anyway, it’s not costing them anything.

Radio frequency bands are already publicly regulated and finely controlled for all other important purposes.

Administering ham bands does cost, especially when you're dragged into internal ham enthusiast politics - source, worked for our radio spectrum regulator.

Even better. The state could easily take the non commercial nature of the operation into consideration compared to the intention of the existing fee system. A whole lot of the internet lives off this idea of commercial users subsidizing, while also getting much in return, from the volunteer subset.

I’m curious though, does the cost also come from internal conflict or just from outsiders like local/state regulators?

We (NZ) do reduce licensing fees for the ham freqs.

But they can be a rich source of complaints when someone takes an internal club dispute onto the airwaves, and then you've got to send out the radio engineers to locate the offending signal(s), then begin enforcement action if needed.

CB bands are even worse for the petty politics on air because you access them via a GURL (general user radio license) which means anyone can buy a CB and go wild.

We also don't see much payback mainly because the types of comms ham operators can provide are incorporated into our existing emergency and disaster agencies.

I think you've hit the nail on the head with the 'types of comms hams can provide' comment.

UK perspective -- there isn't much hams can offer here either. An emergency response team wants a local repeater, you can't set it up on a ham ticket (at least not without an NOV and the cooperation of the RSGB ETCC).

But the rescue squad can get their own equipment, a local radio supplier might subsidise the cost, and all they need to use it is an Ofcom Business Radio licence (£70 for - I can't remember if it's three years or five).

Police, fire and rescue are largely kitted out with Airwave radios anyway these days. So why are the hams needed?

Emergency response is a hollow-as-heck argument, the training and experiment side is a far better one.

(ObFD: licensed UK ham, de M0OFX ex M6OFX/2E0OFX)

Here in my country, our emergency services and disaster response teams maintain their own resilient radio communication capacity. This includes HF capacity.

Does America not do that?

Yes, of course. But those frequencies are off limits to civilians. The parent didn’t mean to imply that ham is our “only” emergency communication system, it’s just one of them.

In the southwest, the U.S. doesn't supply a decent set of emergency comms to Native Americans, so volunteer hams supplement it.

This is what you will get when you think some paper pushing clerk needs to decide what is good for others. California has already made up its mind. People have overwhelmingly voted for politicians to run everybody's life. This decision does not surprise me at all.

The HAMs should start proposing they end-to-end encrypt the repeater operations, and wait for the NSA money tap to start pouring out to stop that and keep everything running just like it is now... /s

Public: Lets elect representatives.

Legislation: Lets pass a bill that lets technocrats decide the details on regulations.

Technocrats: I don't like the look for those emergency antennas from my vacation cabin in the mountains.

Gun-> shoot-> foot

Yay. Good luck with that, California. For some people it could be their purpose in life is just to serve as a example for others. This seems to be California's role as of late.

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