K3ZO's recollections of the 1985 Mexico City quake brought back many vivid
memories of my interactions with our southern neighbors. I too was involved
in passing numerous messages (about 5000 I think) over the course of a week
or so. The primary traffic frequency became so congested that we went to a
three frequency solution. (One for passing traffic, one for taking new
traffic & one for passing received answers) A local radio club would
collect all of the incoming traffic & pass it to us on packet. We'd pass
the replies to another member of the club who would pass it over the air.
Some key things I learned
- Assign a traffic number to each message encoding the origination date
into the number
- Make sure you clearly annunciate the difference between "seis" and "tres"
- All of the long distance bills are justified by one emotional, teary
eyed, thank you.
- If K1MAN comes on the frequency and claims it's his god given right to
be NCS, call the FCC
With the progress in the packet world, I'm sure a disaster of the '85
quake's magnitude would be handled mostly with packet. Maybe someone should
have a WRTC type contest that would be a simulated national disaster to hone
some of the raw talent that exists among our fraternity.
73,
Fred Fubar, K9VV
(New e-mail k9vv@indy.net)
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