[CQ-Contest] Contests during Katrina recovery

[Bob Naumann - W5OV]

Larry,

I heard some traffic being passed last night on 3935, 3900, and 3873 into
and out of parts of Louisiana and Mississippi.  Apparently, some local phone
service is available, but long distance is cut off in most areas.

However, it seems that most of the information is being handled by non-radio
people as many of those bringing health & welfare inquiries were being
directed to web sites (www.nola.com, www.westgulfnews.com and
messageboards.weather.com) to get information.

Since the majority of the affected area is without power, and little if any
fuel, few are able to operate (at least yesterday) with the exception of
K5AH who was running on a generator.  He is in Slidell, LA which is on the
North side of Lake Ponchartrain - across from New Orleans.  N5PA in Laurel,
MS reported in an email earlier today that he has gotten a generator, but
has only one gallon of gas.  He reported that no utility poles are left
standing within a mile of his QTH.  He's busy with survival issues and is
not going to think about doing radio for a while.

The infrastructure in many of those areas will take months to rebuild.  If
operators can be established in those areas, I would think it would be
likely that H&W traffic will ramp up as time goes by if anything.

The Salvation Army SATERN net runs on 14265, which certainly could be
impacted since it's not one of those perpetual ownership 14300 and up nets.

The question I have is could we get global cooperation in keeping contest
activity away from these emergency nets?  I'm not against the idea, I'm just
not sure the effort will be effective.

73,
Bob W5OV


-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Schimelpfenig [mailto:k7sv at adelphia.net] 
Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2005 11:33 AM
To: cq-contest at contesting.com
Subject: [CQ-Contest] Contests during Katrina recovery

(K1PX)
"I don't want to open a can of worms but I think that it would be a good
idea to suspend contests for the time being while the recovery efforts are
getting underway."

Probably not a bad idea.  Based on the frequencies to avoid that were
provided by Ward, it appears that all the traffic is being handled by SSB
nets, so suspension could be limited to phone contests.

Looking at the month of September, the next contest and one that could be
very disruptive is WAE Phone the weekend of the 11th. Then through the end
of the month there are 4 or 5 state QSO parties, Scandinavian Activity SSB,
and the SSB Sprint. The very beginnng and end of Oct have fone contests that
could be very disruptive as well.

One has to wonder how quickly the health and welfare traffic in and out of
the Gulf will taper off.

73 de Lar K7SV 

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