[CQ-Contest] Hurricane Ike and Contests

[Jack Brindle]

While Jeff is right, there are widespread power and communications  
outages across Southeast Texas and Southern Louisiana. Flooding is  
worse that was seen during Hurricane Rita three years ago. 75 meter  
sideband nets will be very important for the next several days to  
carry emergency communications into and out of the areas.  As we have  
seen, internet services just cannot be counted on during these times  
when the network is down in the areas.

So please, give wide berth to the storm and emergency nets on the  
bands at this time, and if you are needed, jump in to help out.


On Sep 12, 2008, at 5:26 PM, Jeff Clarke wrote:

>> From ARRL Webpage:
>
> Hurricane Nets Active on SSB for Ike (Sep 12, 2008) -- ARRL Contest  
> Branch Manager Sean Kutzko, KX9X reminds all contesters to please  
> be mindful of the situation in Texas and the Gulf Coast region this  
> weekend; Hurricane Ike is currently slated to land near Houston  
> early Saturday morning. "This weekend is the ARRL September VHF QSO  
> Party, Worked All Europe (SSB), the North American SSB Sprint, the  
> Arkansas QSO Party, as well as several other radio events," Kutzko  
> said. "Please keep in mind that there will be Net operations going  
> on in the upper portions of 80, 40 and 20 meters for the affected  
> Gulf Coast area in the path of Hurricane Ike. If you find yourself  
> being asked to change frequencies because you're on a Net for  
> Hurricane Ike operations, please cooperate. Do your part to keep  
> Net operations free of interference during this critical time."
>
>
> Thanks to Sean for his public service announcement. To be fair is  
> the ARRL going to publish an announcement on the front page of  
> their website to the general ham population to remind them to avoid  
> these frequencies as well. It seems too many time contesters are  
> blamed for the problems that occur on the bands. I think 99.9%
> of us are smart enought to do the right thing and avoid these  
> frequencies.
>
> Much of the important hurricane traffic takes place over VoIP and  
> Echolink or local Skywarn VHF repeaters so interference from  
> contesters should be a non-issue.
> Many of these hurricane nets on 20 meters might be useful when a  
> hurricane is down in the Carribean but when one is near the coast  
> of the USA you get 24 hour
> around the clock coverage from media outlets such as CNN and the  
> Weather Channel so I don't really see a useful purpose that these  
> nets serve.
>
>
> Jeff KU8E
>
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- Jack Brindle, W6FB ex-WB5KQJ
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