[CQ-Contest] Public Service

[David L. Thompson]

At 08:23 PM 12/31/97 -0500, Jim KI7Y wrote:
>As Ward N0AX and Ron WD4AHZ have pointed out, contesters make would make
>very good emergency communicators.
>I also  want to point out that in a lot of cases it has been just the
>opposite, that many traffic handlers have become contesters. Tree N6TR and
>a multitude of other 6 call area contesters are a prime example.  And I
>came from that  direction myself.  Must admit contest exchanges thru
>QRM,QRN, QSB etc are easier than lots of written messages.  And in
>listening to some of the existing emergency operations, most contesters
>would have passed the traffic in the time they take to give out callsigns
>and instructions.

Jim makes a good point.  Most of the contesters that came up in the late
50's and early 60's were into traffic handling and emergency communications.
We used this experience well with hurricanes, tornados, and floods.  Between
emergencies most were active handling traffic in the ARRL NTS, Civil
Defense/RACES or were active in MARS.  Being an ARRL EC oe SEC (emergency
coordinator) was popular, too.  As I said in an earlier message the ARRL SS
exchange was originally designed to train traffic handlers.

The place where contesters and non contesters (USA/Canada) can come together
is the ARRL Field Day.  While not officially a contest, this is a great
place to make use of our skills and rub elbows....We did this at W5KHB (Now
K5OCM) at the Old Natchez Amateur Radio Club...and we won 3A 3 times!!!

73, Best of 98 to all
Dave K4JRB 



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