[CQ-Contest] anti-contest petition MMSN

[Steve Lott]

I bet if we ignore them and their petition
we will loose nothing

Amateur Radio and it's privileges
are not going to be regulated by a minority

The Manufacturers alone would go out of business if they had to depend on
the few
I would bet a few Contesters spend more money on equipment
than all of those "ARES" types do

While I have never really wanted to choose sides
it really torques my jaw how much we have seen
"them" cause a division amongst us

I view most of this division as post Katrina "action" from the ARRL
while they meant well, they built a monster

I have seen for example a lot of Tax dollars dumped into the hands of a few
so called "ARES" groups that formed
versus support for the long standing larger member bodied clubs that have
always given a hand when needed

That and then add AIMS and NIMS test to prove your able to be deployed is a
laugh
exams do not prove a person can do anything in the field and a good
percentage of those that pass an AIMS or NIMS will just become a burden on
those they are there to support !

I was one of those members of a long standing organization of contest,
casual and yes even Ares members that deployed to New Orleans in support of
Post Katrina emergency comm support

It still boggles mt mind that the Mississippi section manager was the only
one to send me a letter of thanks
for my work,  NOT that I needed thanks mind you, but I am in Louisiana !!!

And I will state that I received on the air help from many people
Marine Time Net OPS, Mid Cars members as well as several contest ops that
had big gun signals that were
able to relay vital info To casual OPS that simply looked up an address and
google it for a GPS location

The most aggravating thing was OPS that were using funny phonetics instead
of standardized ones
when one has only an our or two of sleep in a 30 hour period and only 8
hours over a 5 day period
simply things like blooming zipper flipper for a suffix of bzf is real hard
to grasp
esp when it is not necessary !!!

(it is much hard to see a street address from a Helicopter than it is to fly
to a given GPS coordinate)

I know I am getting Off topic a bit......
The most important part of it all was we (The Ham community) did save lives
!!!!!!!
we did so because we were able to deploy ops fast independent of
any bureaucratic nonsense
I fell today the ARRL and ARES Groups have now created
the bureaucratic monster for us
that caused people to wait for three days just for drinking water

Sorry for the Rant !!!!!

73
steve
kg5vk


On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 5:38 AM, <kr2q at optimum.net> wrote:

> I did not know about this.  Even more, look at their home page:
> http://www.mmsn.org/
>
> The petition "background" is amazing to me.  I quote:
> "The Maritime Mobile Service Net (MMSN) operates on 14300.0 KHz, 365 days a
> year, from 12
> noon until 10 PM Eastern time. "
>
> So they effectively own this QRG for 10 hours per day, every day?  And you
> have to just
> love the precision: "decimal zero."  :-)
>
> Additionally, they claim massive support (TIC): "This was the wish of all
> nearly 100 amateurs attending the GAREC meeting. "
>
> Wow...100 of them, huh?  Let's see, if we add up the ops at the top 10
> M/M's...that would be...
> oh, more than 100.  Not to mention the ten of thousands of contest
> participants nor the
> >5000 entrants (SSB CQWW).
>
> They have a petition? We should too.  Any volunteers?
>
> I'm all in favor of emergency ops taking priority...but only when there is
> an emergency.  Just
> how many lives have been lost because their NET heard contesters actually
> contesting that
> prevented them from "doing their thing?"
>
> The thing that further gets me, is that they think that we are somehow
> focusing on them;
> I guess they are unable to actually the band beyond their own net QRG.
>
> As far as I know, nobody should have exclusive rights to any QRG, never
> mind for
> "365 days a year, from 12 noon until 10 PM"
>
> What brass!
>
> de Doug KR2Q
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