[TowerTalk] Chicago Tribune news: Ham radio tower has the OKsignal

[Tom Anderson]

Ooops, sorry I forgot to delete the message at the bottom. Twenty lashes 
with a piece of RG-8.--Tom, WW5L

Tom Anderson wrote:
> 
> Reprinted from DallasNews.Com technology section.  A 5-column article 
> ran Wednesday 9/23/04 in the Dallas Morning News's Business section. 
> Photos of Brandenburg and some of the devastation from the Caymans ran 
> with the story.  Tom Anderson, WW5L/7P8TA/V31EF
> 
> Link to the online story is below.  You may have to join DallasNews.com 
> to see photos though.
> 
> http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/ptech/generalstories2/092204ptechccjrhamradio.2cc9.html 
> 
> 
> Ham radio to the rescue
> 
> Dallas exec sets up in Caymans after Ivan
> 
> September 22, 2004
> 
> By VIKAS BAJAJ / The Dallas Morning News
> 
> It didn't take David Brandenburg long to make up his mind after he was 
> unable to reach any of his friends on the Cayman Islands a day after 
> Hurricane Ivan ravaged the British territory.
> David Brandenburg
> David Brandenburg snapped a photo of the hurricane devastation in the 
> Grand Caymans. He rushed to the islands to check on friends and set up a 
> ham radio station there.
> 
> With his wife's encouragement, the lifelong ham radio operator headed 
> for the Caribbean islands equipped with gear to restore a communications 
> link to the mainland after the hurricane struck Sept. 12. He flew to 
> Tampa, Fla., on Sept. 13, switching to a friend's twin-engine propeller 
> plane early the next morning to make the final hop to the Grand Caymans.
> 
> "We left kind of on a wing and prayer," said Mr. Brandenburg, chairman 
> and chief executive of Dallas-based Intervoice Inc. "We had no idea 
> whether we would be able to land, and in fact we were turned down for a 
> few hours."
> 
> Within hours of arriving, he had set up a ham radio station at a 
> friend's condo and was relaying messages to the mainland, reassuring 
> worried relatives and giving an account of the devastation.
> 
> Before heading for the Gulf Coast last week, Ivan ravaged the Caymans, 
> knocking out power, telephone and water utilities on the banking and 
> tourism hub. The systems began coming back online late last week.
> 
> Ham radios have often served as the critical communications backup in 
> the aftermath of natural disasters because they don't rely on a 
> centralized infrastructure and can communicate over long distances. But 
> the island's ham radio operators couldn't serve as a backstop because 
> the hurricane's winds destroyed their antennas.
> 
> "That's one of the reasons I went down there," said Mr. Brandenburg, 59. 
> "There are probably a dozen hams that are residents there. ... Everyone 
> I talked to had lost their antenna."
> 
> Mr. Brandenburg, who started operating ham radios when he was 14, found 
> his most important function on the island was dispelling mistaken 
> Internet reports about Ivan's toll on life and property.
> 
> "One report on the Internet said that 40 people had died at a shelter, 
> and that was not true," he said. "There were rumors that hotels had been 
> blown off, and that wasn't true."
> 
> To be sure, Ivan did wreak much damage on the islands, and it will take 
> months to clean up and restore the infrastructure.
> 
> When Mr. Brandenburg left on Friday, the islands' wireless-phone 
> companies were just beginning to broadcast signals again. Commercial 
> power was still not available in many places this week.
> 
> The power outage made it hard to keep the ham radios going. Mr. 
> Brandenburg improvised with generators and batteries from the island's 
> golf carts. "The generator would keep going out because we didn't have 
> enough gas," he said.
> 
> Though supplies are now streaming onto the islands, Mr. Brandenburg and 
> his friends breakfasted and lunched on dry roasted peanuts and water. 
> For dinner, they grilled fresh food that his Tampa friend would fly in 
> on supply runs to the mainland.
> 
> "The good news is that everyone was working very hard, and there are 
> lots of supplies coming into the islands," he said. "And soon all the 
> women and children will be off the island."
> 
> Mr. Brandenburg returned to Texas on Friday, leaving behind two sets of 
> ham radios. Altogether, the trip and equipment cost him $8,000, a small 
> price for checking on friends he has known for the 25 years he has 
> visited the islands.
> 
> "It wasn't necessarily a lot of fun," he said, "But it was a great time."
> 
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